AT LARGE 



BY 

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 

FELLOW OF MAGDALENE* COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 

AUTHOR OF "the UPTON LETTERS," ETC. 



Hy¥:C EGO MECUM 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

^be ftnfcf?crbocftcr prees 
1908 










Copyright, 1908 

BY 

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 



Zbc Iftnfcftcrbocfter I^re08, "Rcw ©otii 



Certain of the essays in this collection have 
already been published in Putnam's Monthly 



Contents 



I. 


The Scene .... 


I 


11. 


Contentment 


24 


III. 


Friendship . . . 


47 


IV. 


Humour .... 


72 


V. 


Travel .... 


95 


VI. 


Specialism .... 


120 


VII. 


Our Lack op Great Men 


146 


VIII. 


Shyness .... 


173 


IX. 


Equality .... 


197 


X. 


The Dramatic Sense 


217 


XI. 


Kelmscott and William 






Morris .... 


240 


XII. 


A Speech Day 


264 


XIII. 


Literary Finish 


290 


XIV. 


A Midsummer Day's Dream . 


313 



vi 


Contents 




CHAPTER 




PAGE 


XV. 


Symbols 


. 331 


XVI. 


Optimism 


. 351 


XVII. 


Joy . . . . 


. 374 


XVIII. 


The Love op God . 


V 395 




Epilogue 


. 416 



AT LARGE 



At Large 
I 

V. 
The Scene 

YES, of course it is an experiment! But 
it is made in corpore vili. It is not 
irreparable, and there is no reason, more 's the 
pity, why I should not please myself. I will 
ask — it is a rhetorical question which needs 
no answer — what is a hapless bachelor to do, 
who is professionally occupied and tied down 
in a certain place for just half the year? 
What is he to do with the other half? I can- 
not live on in my college rooms, and I am not 
compelled to do so for economy. I have near 
relations and many friends, at whose houses I 
should be made welcome. But I cannot be 
like the wandering dove, who found no re- 
pose. I have a great love of my independence 
and my liberty. I love my own fireside, my 
own chair, my own books, my own way. It 



At Large 



is little short of torture to have to conform to 
the rules of other households, to fall in with 
other people's arrangements, to throw my 
pen down when the gong sounds, to make my- 
self agreeable to fortuitous visitors, to be led 
whither I would not. I do this, a very little, 
because I do not desire to lose touch with my 
kind; but then my work is of a sort which 
brings me into close touch day after day with 
all sorts of people, till I crave for recollection 
and repose; the prospect of a round of visits 
is one that fairly unmans me. No doubt it 
implies a certain want of vitality, but one does 
not increase one's vitality by making over- 
drafts upon it; and then, too, I am a slave to 
my pen, and the practice of authorship is in- 
consistent with paying visits. 

Of course, the obvious remedy is marriage; 
but one cannot marry from prudence, or from 
a sense of duty, or even to increase the birth- 
rate, which I am concerned to see is diminish 
ing. I am, moreover, to be perfectly frank, 
a transcendentalist on the subject of marriage. 
I know that a happy marriage is the finest and 
noblest thing in the world, and I would resign 
all the conveniences I possess with the utmost 



The Scene 3 

readiness for it. But a great passion cannot 
be the result of reflection, or of desire, or even 
of hope. One cannot argue oneself into it; 
one must be carried away. " You have never 
let yourself go," says a wise and gentle aunt, 
when I bemoan my unhappy fate. To which 
I reply that I have never done anything else. 
I have lain down in streamlets, I have leapt 
into silent pools, I have made believe I was 
in the presence of a deep emotion, like the 
dear little girl in one of Keynolds's pictures, 
who hugs a fat and lolling spaniel over an 
inch-deep trickle of water, for fear he should 
be drowned. I do not say that it is not my 
fault. It is my fault, my own fault, my own 
great fault, as we say in the Compline confes- 
sion. The fault has been an over-sensibility. 
I have desired close and romantic relations so 
much that I have dissipated my forces; yet 
when I read such a book as the love-letters of 
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, I 
realise at once both the supreme nature of the 
gift, and the hopelessness of attaining it un- 
less it be given; but I try to complain, as the 
beloved mother of Carlyle said about her 
health, as little as possible. 



4 At Large 

Well, then, as I say, what is a reluctant 
bachelor who loves his liberty to do with him- 
self? I cannot abide the life of towns, though 
I live in a town half the year. I like friends, 
and I do not care for acquaintances. There 
is no conceivable reason why, in the pursuit 
of pleasure, I should frequent social enter- 
tainments that do not amuse me. What have 
I then done? I have done what I liked best. 
I have taken a big roomy house in the quietest 
country I could find. I have furnished it 
comfortably, and I have hitherto found no 
difficulty in inducing my friends, one or two 
at a time, to come and share my life. I shall 
have something to say about solitude presently, 
but meanwhile I will describe my hermitage. 

The old Isle of Ely lies in the very centre 
of the Fens. It is a range of low gravel hills, 
shaped roughly like a human hand. The river 
runs at the wrist, and Ely stands just above 
it, at the base of the palm, the fingers stretch- 
ing out to the west. The fens themselves, vast 
peaty plains, the bottoms of the old lagoons, 
made up of the accumulation of centuries of 
potting water-plants, stretch round it on every 
side; far away you can see the low heights of 



The Scene S 

Brandon, the Newmarket Downs, the Gogma- 
gogs behind Cambridge, the low wolds of 
Huntingdon. To the north the interminable 
plain, through which the rivers welter and the 
great levels run, stretches up to the Wash. 
So slight is the fall of the land towards the 
sea, that the tide steals past me in the huge 
Hundred-foot cut, and makes itself felt as far 
south as Earith Bridge, where the Ouse comes 
leisurely down with its clear pools and reed- 
beds. At the extremity of the southernmost 
of all the fingers of the Isle, a big hamlet clus- 
ters round a great ancient church, whose blunt 
tower is visible for miles above its grove of 
sycamores. More than twelve centuries ago 
an old saint, whose name I think was Owen 
— though it was Latinised by the monks into 
Ovinus, because he had the care of the sheep, 
— kept the flocks of St. Etheldreda, queen and 
abbess of Ely, on these wolds. One does not 
know what were the visions of this rude and 
ardent saint, as he paced the low heights day 
by day, looking over the monstrous lakes. At 
night no doubt he heard the cries of the 
marsh-fowl and saw the elfin lights stir on 
the reedy flats. Perhaps some touch of fever 



6 At Large 

kindled his visions; but he raised a tiny shrine 
here, and here he laid his bones; and long 
after, when the monks grew rich, they raised 
a great church here to the memory of the 
shepherd of the sheep, and beneath it, I doubt 
not, he sleeps. 

What is it I see from my low hills? It is 
an enchanted land for me^ and I lose myself 
in wondering how it is that no one, poet or 
artist, has ever wholly found out the charm 
of these level plains, with their rich black 
soil, their straight dykes, their great drift- 
roads, that run as far as the eye can reach 
into the unvisited fen. In summer it is a feast 
of the richest green from verge to verge; here 
a clump of trees stands up, almost of the hue 
of indigo, surrounding a lonely shepherd's 
cote; a distant church rises, a dark tower over 
the hamlet elms; far beyond, I see low wolds, 
streaked and dappled by copse and wood; far 
to the south, I see the towers and spires of 
Cambridge, as of some spiritual city — the 
smoke rises over it on still days, hanging like 
a cloud; to the east lie the dark pine- woods of 
Suffolk, to the north an interminable fen; but 
not only is it that one sees a vast extent of 



The Scene 7 

sky, with great cloud-battalions crowding up 
from the south, but all the colour of the land- 
scape is crowded into a narrow belt to the 
eye, which gives it an intensity of emerald 
hue that I have seen nowhere else in the world. 
There is a sense of deep peace about it all, the 
herb of the field just rising in its place over 
the wide acres; the air is touched with a lazy 
fragrance, as of hidden flowers; and there is 
a sense, too, of silent and remote lives, of men 
that glide quietly to and fro in the great pas- 
tures, going quietly about their work in a 
leisurely calm. 

In the winter it is fairer still, if one has 
a taste for austerity. The trees are leafless 
now; and the whole flat is lightly washed 
with the most delicate and spare tints, the 
pasture tinted with the yellowing bent, the 
pale stubble, the rich plough-land, all blend- 
ing into a subdued colour; and then, as the 
day declines and the plain is rimmed with a 
frosty mist, the smouldering glow of the orange 
sunset begins to burn clear on the horizon, 
the gray laminated clouds becoming ridged 
with gold and purple, till the whole fades, like 
a shoaling sea, into the purest green, while 



8 At Large 

the cloud-banks grow black and ominous, and 
far-off lights twinkle like stars in solitary 
farms. 

Of the house Itself, exteriorly, perhaps the 
less said the better; it was built, by an earl 
to whom the estate belonged, as a shooting- 
box. I have often thought that it must have 
been ordered from the Army and Navy Stores. 
It is of yellow brick, blue-slated, and there 
has been a pathetic feeling after giving it a 
meanly Gothic air ; it is ill-placed, shut in by 
trees, approached only by a very dilapidated 
farm-road; and the worst of it is that a curi- 
ous and picturesque house was destroyed to 
build it. It stands in what was once a very 
pretty and charming little park, with an 
ancient avenue of pollard trees, lime and elm. 
You can see the old terraces of the Hall, the 
mounds of ruins, the fish-ponds, the grass- 
grown pleasance. It is pleasantly timbered, 
and I have an orchard of honest fruit-trees of 
my own. First of all I suspect it was a Ro- 
man fort; for the other day my gardener 
brought me in half of the handle of a fine old 
Roman water- jar, red pottery smeared with 
plaster, with two pretty laughing faces pinched 



The Scene 9 

lightly out under the volutes. A few days 
after I felt like Polycrates of Samos, that 
over-fortunate tyrant, when, walking myself 
in my garden, I descried and gathered up 
the rest of the same handle, the fractures fit- 
ting exactly. There are traces of Roman oc- 
cupation hereabouts in mounds and earth- 
works. Not long ago a man ploughing in the 
fen struck an old red vase up with the share, 
and searching the place found a number of 
the same urns within the space of a few yards, 
buried in the peat, as fresh as the day they 
were made. There was nothing else to be 
found, and the place was under water till fifty 
years ago; so that it must have been a boat- 
load of pottery being taken in to market that 
was swamped there, how many centuries ago! 
But there have been stranger things than that 
found: half a mile away, where the steep 
gravel hill slopes down to the fen, a man hoe- 
ing brought up a bronze spear-head. He took 
it up to the lord of the manor, who was in- 
terested in curiosities. The squire hurried to 
the place and had it all dug out carefully; 
quite a number of spear-heads were found, and 
a beautiful bronze sword, with the holes where 



lo At Large 

the leather straps of the handle passed in and 
out. I have held this fine blade in my hands, 
and it is absolutely undinted. It may be 
Roman, but it is probably earlier. Nothing 
else was found, except some mouldering frag- 
ments of wood that looked like spear-staves; 
and this, too, it seems, must have been a boat- 
load of warriors, perhaps some raiding party, 
swamped on the edge of the lagoon with all 
their unused weapons, which they were pre- 
sumably unable to recover, if indeed any sur- 
vived to make the attempt. Hard by is the 
place where the great fight related in Eere- 
ward the Wake took place. The Normans 
were encamped southwards at Willingham, 
where a line of low entrenchments is still 
known as Belsar^s Field, from Belisarius, the 
Norman duke in command. It is a quiet place 
enough now, and the yellow-hammers sing 
sweetly and sharply in the thick thorn hedges. 
The Normans made a causeway of faggots and 
earth across the fen, but came at last to the 
old channel of the Ouse, which they could not 
bridge, and here they attempted to cross in 
great flat-bottomed boats, but were foiled by 
Hereward and his men, their boats sunk, and 



The Scene n 

hundreds of stout warriors drowned in the 
oozy river-bed. There still broods for me a 
certain horror over the place, where the river 
in its confined channel now runs quietly, by 
sedge and willow-herb and golden-rod, between 
its high flood banks, to join the Cam to the 
east 

But to return to my house. It was once a 
monastic grange of Ely, a farmstead with a 
few rooms, no doubt, where sick monks and 
ailing novices were sent to get change of air 
and a taste of country life. There is a bit of 
an old wall bordering my garden, and a strip 
of pale soil runs across the gooseberry beds, 
pale with dust of mortar and chips of brick, 
where another old wall stood. There was a 
great pigeon-house here, pulled down for the 
shooting-box, and the garden is still full of 
old carved stones, lintels, and mullions, and 
capitals of pillars, and a grotesque figure of 
a bearded man, with a tunic confined round 
the waist by a cord, which crowns one of my 
rockeries. But it is all gone now, and the 
pert cockneyfied house stands up among the 
shrubberies and walnuts, surveying the ruins 
of what has been. 



12 At Large 

But I must not abuse my house, because, 
whatever it is outside, it is absolutely com- 
fortable and convenient within; it is solid, 
well built, spacious, sensible, reminding one of 
the " solid joys and lasting treasure " that 
the hymn says "none but Zion's children 
know." And, indeed, it is a Zion to be at 
ease in. 

One other great charm it has : from the end 
of my orchard the ground falls rapidly in a 
great pasture. Some six miles away, over the 
dark expanse of Grunty Fen, the towers of 
Ely, exquisitely delicate and beautiful, crown 
the ridge; on clear sunny days I can see the 
sun shining on the lead roofs, and the great 
octagon rises with all its fretted pinnacles. 
Indeed, so kind is Providence, that the huge 
brick mass of the Ely water-tower, like an 
overgrown temple of Vesta, blends itself 
pleasantly with the cathedral, projecting from 
the western front like a great Galilee. 

The time to make pious pilgrimage to Ely 
is when the apple-orchards are in bloom. 
Then the grim western tower, with its sombre 
windows, the gabled roofs of the canonical 
houses, rise in picturesque masses over acres 



The Scene 13 

of white blossom. But for me, six miles away, 
the cathedral is a never-ending sight of beauty. 
On moist days it draws nearer, as if <5arved 
out of a fine blue stone ; on a gray day it looks 
more like a fantastic crag, with pinnacles of 
rock. Again it will loom a ghostly white 
against a thunder-laden sky. Grand and pa- 
thetic at once, for it stands for something that 
we have parted with. What was the outward 
and stately form of a mighty idea, a rich 
system, is now little more than an aesthetic 
symbol. It has lost heart, somehow, and its 
significance only exists for ecclesiastically or 
artistically minded persons; it represents a 
force no longer in the front of the battle. 

One other fine feature of the countryside 
there is, of which one never grows tired. If 
one crosses over to Sutton, with its huge 
church, the tower crowned with a noble octa- 
gon, and the village pleasantly perched along 
a steep ridge of orchards, one can drop down 
to the west, past a beautiful old farmhouse 
called Berristead, with an ancient chapel, 
built into the homestead, among fine elms. 
The road leads out upon the fen, and here run 
two great levels, as straight as a line for 



14 At Large 

many miles, up which the tide pulsates day 
by day; between them lies a wide tract of pas- 
ture called the Wash, which in summer is a 
vast grazing-ground for herds, in rainy weather 
a waste of waters, like a great estuary — north 
and south it runs, crossed by a few roads or 
black-timbered bridges, the fen-water pouring 
down to the sea. It is great place for birds 
this. The other day I disturbed a brood of 
redshanks here, the parent birds flying round 
and round, piping mournfully, almost within 
reach of my hand. A little farther down, not 
many months ago, there was observed a great 
commotion in the stream, as of some big beast 
swimming slowly; the level was netted, and 
they hauled out a great sturgeon, who had 
somehow lost his way and was trying to find 
a spawning-ground. There is an ancient cus- 
tom that all sturgeon netted in English wa- 
ters belong by right to the sovereign; but no 
claim was advanced in this case. The line 
between Ely and March crosses the level, far 
ther north, and the huge freight-trains go 
smoking and clanking over the fen all day. 
I often walk along the grassy flood-bank for 
a mile or two, to the tiny decayed village of 



The Scene 15 

Mepal, with a little ancient clinrch, where an 
old courtier lies, an Englishman, but with 
property near Lisbon, who was a gentleman- 
in-waiting to James II. in his French exile, 
retired invalided, and spent the rest of his 
days " between Portugal and Byall Fen " — 
an odd pair of localities to be so conjoined! 

And what of the life that it is possible to 
live in my sequestered grange? I suppose 
there is not a quieter region in the whole of 
England. There are but two or three squires 
and a few clergy in the Isle, but the villages 
are large and prosperous ; the people eminently 
friendly, shrewd, and independent, with homely 
names for the most part, but with a sprink- 
ling both of Saxon appellations, like Cutlack, 
which is Guthlac a little changed, and Nor- 
man names, like Camps, inherited perhaps 
from some invalided soldier who made his 
home there after the great fight. There is but 
little communication with the outer world; 
on market-days a few trains dawdle along the 
valley from Ely to St. Ives and back again. 
They are fine, sturdy, prosperous village com- 
munities, that mind their own business, and 
take their pleasure in religion and in song, 



1 6 At Large 

like their forefathers the fenmen, Girvii, who 
sang their three-part catches with rude 
harmony. 

Part of the charm of the place is, I confess, 
its loneliness. One may go for weeks together 
with hardly a caller; there are no social func- 
tions, no festivities, no gatherings. One may 
once in a month have a chat with a neighbour, 
or take a cup of tea at a kindly parsonage. 
But people tend to mind their own business, 
and live their own lives in their own circle ; yet 
there is an air of tranquil neighbourliness 
all about. The inhabitants of the region re- 
spect one's taste in choosing so homely and 
serene a region for a dwelling-place, and they 
know that whatever motive one may have had 
for coming, it was not dictated by a feverish 
love of society. I have never known a dis- 
trict — and I have lived in many parts of Eng- 
land — where one was so naturally and simply 
accepted as a part of the place. One is greeted 
in all directions with a comfortable cordiality, 
and a natural sort of good-breeding; and thus 
the life comes at once to have a precise quality, 
a character of its own. Every one is inde- 
pendent, and one is expected to be independent 



The Scene 17 

too. There is no suspicion of a stranger; it 
is merely recognised that he is in search of a 
definite sort of life, and he is made frankly 
and unostentatiously at home. 

And so the days race away there in the 
middle of the mighty plain. No plans are 
ever interrupted, no one questions one's go- 
ing and coming as one will, no one troubles 
his head about one's occupations or pursuits. 
Any help or advice that one needs is courte- 
ously and readily given, and no favours asked 
or expected in return. One little incident 
gave me considerable amusement. There is a 
private footpath of my own which leads close 
to my house; owing to the house having stood 
for some time unoccupied, people had tended 
to use it as a short cut. The kindly farmer 
obviated this by putting up a little notice- 
board, to indicate that the path was private. 
A day or two afterwards it was removed and 
thrown into a ditch. I was perturbed as well 
as surprised by this, supposing that it showed 
that the notice had offended some local sus- 
ceptibility; and being very anxious to begin 
my tenure on neighbourly terms, I consulted 
my genial landlord, who laughed, and said 



1 8 At Large 



that there was no one who would think of do- 
ing such a thing; and to reassure me he added 
that one of his men had seen the culprit at 
work, and that it was only an old horse, who 
had rubbed himself against the post till he 
had thrown it down. 

The days pass, then, in a delightful mono- 
tony; one reads, writes, sits or paces in the 
garden, scours the country on still sunny 
afternoons. There are many grand churches 
and houses within a reasonable distance, such 
as the great churches near Wisbech and 
Lynn, — West Walton, Walpole St. Peter, 
Tilney, Terrington St. Clement, and a score of 
others — great cruciform structures, in every 
conceivable style, with fine woodwork and 
noble towers, each standing in the centre of a 
tiny, rustic hamlet, built with no idea of pru- 
dent proportion to the needs of the places 
they serve, but out of pure joy and pride. 
There are houses like Beaupre, a pile of fan 
tastic brick, haunted by innumerable phan- 
toms, with its stately orchard closes, or the 
exquisite gables of Snore Hall, of rich Tudor 
brickwork, with fine panelling within. There 
is no lack of shrines for pilgrimage — then, too. 



The Scene 19 

it is not difficult to persuade some like-minded 
friend to share one's solitude. And so the 
quiet hours tick themselves away in an almost 
monastic calm, while one's book grows insen- 
sibly day by day, as the bulrush rises on the 
edge of the dyke. 

I do not say that it would be a life to live 
for the whole of a year, and year by year. 
There is no stir, no eagerness, no brisk inter- 
change of thought about it. But for one who 
spends six months in a busy and peopled place, 
full of duties and discussions and conflicting 
interests, it is like a green pasture and waters 
of comfort. The danger of it, if prolonged, 
would be that things would grow languid, list- 
less, fragrant like the Lotus-eaters' Isle; 
small things would assume undue importance, 
small decisions would seem unduly momen- 
tous; one would tend to regard one's own 
features as in a mirror and through a magni- 
fying glass. But, on the other hand, it is 
good, because it restores another kind of pro- 
portion; it is like dipping oneself in the 
seclusion of a monastic cell. Nowadays the 
image of the world, with all its sheets of de- 
tailed news, all its network of communica- 



20 At Large 

tions, sets too deep a mark upon one's spirit. 
We tend to believe that a man is lost unless he 
is overwhelmed with occupation, unless, like 
the conjurer, he is keeping a dozen balls in 
the air at once. Such a gymnastic teaches a 
man alertness, agility, effectiveness. But it 
has got to be proved that one was sent into 
the world to be effective, and it is not even 
certain that a man has fulfilled the higher law 
of his being if he has made a large fortune by 
business. A sagacious, shrewd, acute man of 
the world is sometimes a mere nuisance; he 
has made his prosperous corner at the expense 
of others, and he has only contrived to ac- 
cumulate, behind a little fence of his own, 
what was meant to be the property of all. 
I have known a good many successful men, 
and I cannot honestly say that I think that 
they are generally the better for their success. 
They have often learnt self-confidence, the 
shadow of which is a good-natured contempt 
for ineffective people; the shadow, on the 
other hand, which falls on the contemplative 
man is an undue diffidence, an indolent depres- 
sion, a tendency to think that it does not very 
much matter what any one does. 



The Scene 21 

But, on the other hand, the contemplative 
man sometimes does grasp one very important 
fact — that we are sent into the world, most of 
us, to learn something about God and our- 
selves; whereas if we spend our lives in 
directing and commanding and consulting 
others, we get so swollen a sense of our own 
importance, our own adroitness, our own 
effectiveness, that we forget that we are tol- 
erated rather than needed. It is better on the 
whole to tarry the Lord^s leisure, than to try 
impatiently to force the hand of God, and to 
make amends for his apparent slothfulness. 
What really makes a nation grow, and im- 
prove, and progress, is not social legislation 
and organisation. That is only the sign of 
the rising moral temperature; and a man who 
sets an example of soberness, and kindliness, 
and contentment is better than a pragmatical 
district visitor with a taste for rating meek 
persons. 

It may be asked, then, do I set myself up 
as an example in this matter? God forbid! 
I live thus because I like it, and not from any 
philosophical or philanthropical standpoint. 
But if more men were to follow their instincts 



22 At Large 

in the matter, instead of being misled and 
bewildered by the conventional view that 
attaches virtue to perspiration, and national 
vigour to the multiplication of unnecessary 
business, it would be a good thing for the com- 
munity. What I claim is that a species of 
mental and moral equilibrium is best iattained 
by a careful proportion of activity and quie- 
tude. What happens in the case of the ma- 
jority of people is that they are so much 
occupied in the process of acquisition, that they 
have no time to sort or dispose their stores; 
and thus life, which ought to be a thing com- 
plete in itself, and ought to be spent, partly in 
gathering materials, and partly in drawing 
inferences, is apt to be a hurried accumula- 
tion lasting to the edge of the tomb. We are 
put into the world, I cannot help feeling, to 
he rather than to do. We excuse our thirst 
for action by pretending to ourselves that our 
own doing may minister to the being of others ; 
but all that it often effects is to inoculate 
others with the same restless and feverish 
bacteria. 

x\nd anyhow, as I said, it is but an experi- 
ment. I can terminate it whenever I have the 



The Scene 23 

wish to do so. Even if it is a failure, it will 
at all events have been an experiment, and 
others may learn wisdom by my mistake; be- 
cause it must be borne in mind that a failure 
in a deliberate experiment in life is often more 
fruitful than a conventional success. People 
as a rule are so cautious; and it is of course 
highly disagreeable to run a risk, and to pay 
the penalty. Life is too short, one feels, to risk 
making serious mistakes; but, on the other 
hand, the cautious man often has the catas- 
trophe, without even having had the pleasure 
of a run for his money. Jowett, the high 
priest of worldly wisdom, laid down as a 
maxim " Never resign " ; but I have found my- 
self that there is no pleasure comparable to 
disentangling oneself from uncongenial sur- 
roundings, unless it be the pleasure of making 
mild experiments and trying unconventional 
schemes. 



II 

Contentment 

I HAVE attempted of late, in more than one 
^ book, to depict a certain kind of tranquil 
life, a life of reflection rather than of action, 
of contemplation rather than of business; and 
I have tried to do this from different points 
of view, though the essence has been the same. 
I endeavoured at first to do it anonymously, 
because I have no desire to recommend these 
ideas as being my own theories. The personal 
background rather detracts from than adds to 
the value of the thoughts, because people can 
compare my theories with my practice, and 
show how lamentably I fail to carry them out. 
But time after time I have been pulled re- 
luctantly out of my burrow, by what I still 
consider a wholly misguided zeal for public- 
ity, tin I have decided that I will lurk no 
longer. It was in this frame of mind that I 
published, under my own name, a book called 
Beside Still Waters, a harmless enough vol- 

24 



Contentment 25 

ume, I thought, which was meant to be a 
deliberate summary or manifesto of these 
ideas. It depicted a young man who, after 
a reasonable experience of practical life, re- 
solved to retire into the shade, and who in 
that position indulged profusely in leisurely 
reverie. The book was carefully enough writ- 
ten, and I have been a good deal surprised 
to find that it has met with considerable dis- 
approval, and even derision, on the part of 
many reviewers. It has been called morbid 
and indolent, and decadent, and half-a-hun- 
dred more ugly adjectives. 

Now I do not for an instant question the 
right of a single one of these conscientious 
persons to form whatever opinion they like 
about my book, and to express it in any terms 
they like. They say, and obviously feel, that 
the thought of the book is essentially thin, 
and that the vein in which it is written is 
offensively egotistical. I do not dispute the 
possibility of their being perfectly right. An 
artist who exhibits his paintings, or a writer 
who publishes his books, challenges the criti- 
cisms of the public; and I am quite sure that 
the reviewers who frankly disliked my book, 



26 At Large 

and said so plainly, thought that they were 
doing their duty to the public, and warning 
them against teaching which they believed to 
be insidious and even immoral. I honour 
them for doing this, and I applaud them, es- 
pecially if they did violence to their own feel- 
ings of courtesy and urbanity in doing so. 

Then there were some good-natured review- 
ers who practically said that the book was 
simply a collection of amiable platitudes; 
but that if the public liked to read such stuff, 
they were quite at liberty to do so. I admire 
these reviewers for a different reason, partly 
for their tolerant permission to the public to 
read what they choose, and still more because 
I like to think that there are so many intelli- 
gent people in the world who are wearisomely 
familiar with ideas which have only slowly 
and gradually dawned upon myself. I have 
no intention of trying to refute or convince 
my critics, and I beg them with all my heart 
to say what they think about my books, be- 
cause only by the frank interchange of ideas 
can we arrive at the truth. 

But what I am going to try to do in this 
chapter is to examine the theory by virtue of 



Contentment 27 

which my book is condemned, and I am going 
to try to give the fullest weight to the con- 
siderations urged against it. I am sure there 
is something in what the critics say, but I be- 
lieve that where we differ is in this: The 
critics who disapprove of my book seem to me 
to think that all men are cast in the same 
mould, and that the principles which hold 
good for some necessarily hold good for all. 
What I like best about their criticisms is that 
they are made in a spirit of moral earnestness 
and ethical seriousness. I am a serious man 
myself, and I rejoice to see others serious. 
The point of view which they seem to recom- 
mend is the point of view of a certain kind 
of practical strenuousness, the gospel of push, 
if I may so call it. They seem to hold that 
people ought to be discontented with what 
they are, that they ought to try to better them- 
selves, that they ought to be active, and what 
they call normal; that when they have done 
their work as energetically as possible, they 
should amuse themselves energetically, too, 
take hard exercise, shout and play, 

" Pleased as the Indian boy to run 
And shoot his arrows in the sun," 



28 At Large 

and that then they should recreate themselves 
like Homeric heroes, eating and drinking, list- 
ening comfortably to the minstrel, and take 
their fill of love in a full-blooded way. 

That is, I think, a very good theory of life 
for some people, though I think it is a little 
barbarous ; it is Spartan rather than Athenian. 

Some of my critics take a higher kind of 
ground, and say that I want to minimise and 
melt down the old stern beliefs and principles 
of morality into a kind of nebulous emotion. 
They remind me a little of an old country 
squire of whom I have heard, of the John Bull 
type, whose younger son, a melancholy and 
sentimental youth, joined the Church of 
Rome. His father was determined that this 
should not separate them, and asked him to 
come home and talk it over. He told his eld- 
est son that he was going to remonstrate with 
the erring youth in a simple and affectionate 
way. The eldest son said that he hoped his 
father would do it tactfully and gently, as 
his brother was highly sensitive; to which his 
father replied that he had thought over what 
he meant to say, and was going to be very 
reasonable. The young man arrived, and was 



Contentment 29 

ushered into the study by his eldest brother. 

^' Well/' said the squire, " very glad to see 
you, Harry; but do you mean to tell me that 
your mother's religion is not good enough for 

a d d ass like you?" 

Now, far from desiring to minimise faith in 
God and the Unseen, I think it is the thing of 
which the world is more in need than anything 
else. What has made the path of faith a 
steep one to tread is partly that it has got ter- 
ribly encumbered with ecclesiastical tradi- 
tions; it has been mended, like the Slough of 
Despond, with cart-loads of texts and insecure 
definitions. And partly, too, the old simple 
undisturbed faith in the absolute truth and 
authority of the Bible has given way. It is 
admitted that the Bible contains a consider- 
able admixture of the legendary element; and 
it requires a strong intellectual and moral 
grip to build one's faith upon a collection of 
writings some of which, at all events, are not 
now regarded as being historically and liter- 
ally true. " If I cannot believe it all," says 
the simple, bewildered soul, " how can I be 
certain that any of it is indubitably true?" 
Only the patient and desirous spirit can de- 



30 At Large 

oide; but, whatever else fades, the perfect 
iDsight, the Divine message of the Son of Man 
cannot fade; the dimmer the historical setting 
becomes, the brighter shine the parables and 
the sayings, so far beyond the power of His 
followers to have originated, so utterly satis- 
fying to our deepest needs. What I desire to 
say with all my heart is that we pilgrims need 
not be dismayed because the golden clue dips 
into darkness and mist; it emerges as bright 
as ever upon the upward slope of the valley. 
If one disregards all that is uncertain, all that 
cannot be held to be securely proved, in the 
sacred writings, there still remain the essen- 
tial facts of the Christian revelation, and more 
deep and fruitful principles than a man can 
keep and make his own in the course of a life- 
time, however purely and faithfully he lives 
and strives. To myself the doubtful matters 
are things absolutely immaterial, like the 
debris of the mine, while the precious ore 
gleams and sparkles in every boulder. 

What, in effect, these critics say is that a 
man must not discuss religion unless he is an 
expert in theology. When I try, as I have 
once or twice tried, to criticise some current 



Contentment 31 

conception of a Christian dogma, the theologi- 
cal reviewer, with a titter that resembles the 
titter of Miss Squeers in Nicholas Nickle'by, 
says that a writer who presumes to discuss 
such questions ought to be better acquainted 
with the modern developments of theology. 
To that I demur, because I am not attempt- 
ing to discuss theology, but current concep- 
tions of theology. If the advance in theology 
has been so enormous, then all I can say is 
that the theologians fail to bring home the 
knowledge of that progress to the man in the 
street. To use a simple parable, what one 
feels about many modern theological state- 
ments is what the eloquent bagman said in 
praise of the Yorkshire ham : " Before you 
know where you are, there — it 's wanished ! " 
This is not so in science; science advances, 
and the ordinary man knows more or less what 
is going on ; he understands what is meant by 
the development of species, he has an inkling 
of what radioactivity means, and so forth; 
but this is because science is making discover- 
ies, while theological discoveries are mainly 
of a liberal and negative kind, a modification 
of old axioms, a loosening of old definitions. 



32 At Large 

Theology has made no discoveries about the 
nature of God, or the nature of the soul; the 
problem of free-will and necessity is as dark 
as ever except that scientific discovery tends 
to show more and more that an immutable law 
regulates the smallest details of life. I honour, 
with all my heart, the critics who have ap- 
proached the Bible in the same spirit in which 
they approach other literature; but the only 
definite result has been to make what was con- 
sidered a matter of blind faith more a matter 
of opinion. But to attempt to scare men away 
from discussing religious topics, by saying 
that it is only a matter for experts, is to act 
in the spirit of the Inquisition. It is like say- 
ing to a man that he must not discuss ques- 
tions of diet and exercise because he is not ac- 
quainted with the Pharmacopceia, or that no 
one may argue on matters of current politics 
unless he is a trained historian. Religion is, 
or ought to be, a matter of vital and daily 
concern for every one of us; if our moral 
progress and our spiritual prospects are 
affected by what we believe, theologians ought 
to be grateful to any one who will discuss 
religious ideas from the current poimt of view, 



Contentment 33 

if if only leads them to clear up misconcep- 
tions that may prevail. If I needed to justify 
myself further, I would only add that since I 
began to write on such subjects, I have re- 
ceived a large number of letters from un- 
known people, who seem to be grateful 
to any one who will attempt to speak 
frankly on these matters, with the earnest de- 
sire, which I can honestly say has never been 
absent from my mind, to elucidate and con- 
firm a belief in simple and essential religious 
principles. 

And now I would go on to say a few words 
as to the larger object which I have had in 
view. My aim has been to show how it is 
possible for people living quiet and humdrum 
lives, without any opportunities of gratifying 
ambition or for taking a leading part on the 
stage of the world, to make the most of simple 
conditions, and to live lives of dignity and 
joy. My own belief is that what is commonly 
called success has an insidious power of poi- 
soning the clear springs of life ; because people 
who grow to depend upon the stimulus of suc- 
cess sink into dreariness and dulness when 
that stimulus is withdrawn. Here my critics 

3 



34 At Large 

have found fault with me for not being more 
strenuous, more virile, more energetic. It is 
strange to me that my object can have been so 
singularly misunderstood. I believe, with all 
my heart, that happiness depends upon strenu- 
ous energy ; but I think that this energy ought 
to be expended upon work, and everyday life, 
and relations with others, and the accessible 
pleasures of literature and art. The gospel 
that I detest is the gospel of success, the 
teaching that every one ought to be discon- 
tented with his setting, that a man ought to 
get to the front, clear a space round him, eat, 
drink, make love, cry, strive, and fight. It 
is all to be at the expense of feebler people. 
That is a detestable ideal, because it is the 
gospel of tyranny rather than the gospel of 
equality. It is obvious, too, that such success 
depends upon a man being stronger than his 
fellows, and is only made possible by shoving 
and hectoring, and bullying the weak. The 
preaching of this violent gospel has done us 
already grievous harm; it is this which has 
tended to depopulate country districts, to 
make people averse to discharging all honest 
subordinate tasks, to make men and women 



Contentment 35 

overvalue excitement and amusement. The 
result of it is the lowest kind of democratic 
sentiment, which says, " Every one is as good 
as every one else, and I am a little better," 
and the jealous spirit, which says, " If I can- 
not be prominent, I will do my best that no 
one else shall be." Out of it develops the de- 
mon of municipal politics, w^hich makes a man 
strive for a place, in the hope of being able 
to order things for which others have to pay. 
It is this teaching which makes power seem 
desirable for the sake of personal advantages, 
and with no care for responsibility. This 
spirit seems to me an utterly vile and detest- 
able spirit. It tends to disguise its rank in- 
dividualism under a pretence of desiring to 
improve social conditions. I do not mean for 
a moment to say that all social reformers are 
of this type; the clean-handed social reformer, 
who desires no personal advantage, and whose 
influence is a matter of anxious care, is one 
of the noblest of men; but now that schemes 
of social reform are fashionable, there are a 
number of blatant people who use them for 
purposes of personal advancement. 
What I rather desire is to encourage a very 



36 At Large 

different kind of individualism, the individual- 
ism of the man who realises that the hope of 
the race depends upon the quality of life, upon 
the number of people who live quiet, active, 
gentle, kindly, faithful lives, enjoying their 
work and turning for recreation to the nobler 
and simpler sources of pleasure — the love of 
nature, poetry, literature, and art. Of course 
the difficulty is that we do not, most of us, find 
our pleasures in these latter things, but in the 
excitement and amusement of social life. I 
mournfully admit it, and I quite see the use- 
lessness of trying to bring pleasures within the 
reach of people when they have no taste for 
them; but an increasing number of people do 
care for such things, and there are still more 
who would care for them, if only they could 
be introduced to them at an impressionable 
age. 

If it is said that this kind of simplicity is 
a very tame and spiritless thing, I would an- 
swer that it has the advantage of being within 
the reach of all. The reason why the pursuit 
of social advancement and success is so hol- 
low, is that the subordinate life is after all 
the life that must fall to the majority of peo- 



Contentment 37 

pie. We cannot organise society on the lines 
of the army of a lesser German state, which 
consisted of twenty-four officers, covered with 
military decorations, and eight privates. The 
successful men, whatever happens, must be a 
small minority; and what I desire is that 
success, as it is called, should fall quietly and 
inevitably on the heads of those who deserve 
it, while ordinary people should put it out of 
their thoughts. It is no use holding up an 
ideal which cannot be attained, and which 
the mere attempt to attain makes fruitful in 
disaster and discontent. 

I do not at all wish to teach a gospel of dul- 
ness. I am of the opinion of the poet who 
said, 

" Life is not life at all without delight, 
Nor hath it any might." 

But I am quite sure that the real pleasures 
of the world are those which cannot be bought 
for money, and which are wholly independent 
of success. 

Every one who has watched children knows 
the extraordinary amount of pleasure that 
they can extract out of the simplest materials. 



38 At Large 

To keep a shop in the corner of a garden, 
where the commodities are pebbles and 
thistle-heads stored in old tin pots, and which 
are paid for in daisies, will be an engrossing 
occupation to healthy children for a long 
summer afternoon. There is no reason why 
that kind of zest should not be imported into 
later life; and, as a matter of fact, people who 
practise self-restraint, who are temperate and 
quiet, do retain a gracious kind of contentment 
in all that they do or say, or think, to extreme 
old age; it is the jaded weariness of over- 
strained lives that needs the stimulus of ex- 
citement to carry them along from hour to 
hour. 

Who does not remember the rigid asceticism 
of Ruskin's childhood? A bunch of keys to 
play with, and a little later a box of bricks; 
the Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress and 
RoMnson Crusoe to read; a summary whip- 
ping if he fell down and hurt himself, or if 
he ever cried. Yet no one would venture to 
say that this austerity in any way stunted 
Ruskin's development or limited his range of 
pleasures; it made him perhaps a little sub- 
missive and unadventurous. But who that 



Contentment 39 

ever saw him, as the most famous art-critic of 
the day, being mercilessly snubbed, when he 
indulged in paradoxes, by the old wine-mer- 
chant, or being told to hold his tongue by the 
grim old mother, and obeying cheerfully and 
sweetly, would have preferred him to be loud, 
contradictory, and self-assertive? The mis- 
chief of our present system of publicity is that 
we cannot enjoy our own ideas, unless we can 
impress people with them, or, at all events, 
impress people with a sense of our enjoyment 
of them. There is a noble piece of character- 
drawing in one of Mr. Henry James's novels, 
The Portrait of a Lady, where Gilbert Os- 
mond, a selfish dilettante, finding that he can- 
not make a great success or attain a great 
position, devotes himself to trying to mystify 
and provoke the curiosity of the world by re- 
tiring into a refined seclusion, and professing 
that it affords him an exquisite kind of 
enjoyment. The hideous vulgarity of his atti- 
tude is not at first sight apparent; he de- 
ceives the heroine, who is a considerable 
heiress, into thinking that here, at least, is a 
man who is living a quiet and sincere life 
among the things of the soul; and, having ob- 



40 At Large 

tained possession of her purse, he sets up 
house in a dignified old palace in Rome, where 
he continues to amuse himself by inviting dis- 
tinquished persons to visit him, in order that 
he may have the pleasure of excluding the 
lesser people who would like to be included. 

This is, of course, doing the thing upon an 
almost sublime scale; but the fact remains 
that, in an age which values notoriety above 
everything except property, a great many peo- 
ple do suffer from the disease of not enjoying 
things unless they are aware that others envy 
their enjoyment. To people of an artistic 
temperament this is a sore temptation, be- 
cause the essence of the artistic temperament 
is its egotism, and egotism, like the Bread- 
and-butter fly, requires a special nutriment — 
the nutriment of external admiration. 

And here, I think, lies one of the pernicious 
results of an over-developed system of ath- 
letics. The more games that people play, the 
better; but I do not think it is wholesome to 
talk about them for large spaces of leisure 
time, any more than it is wholesome to talk 
about your work or your meals. The result 
of all the talk about athletics is that the news- 



Contentment 41 

papers get full of them too. That is only 
natural. It is the business of newspapers to 
find out what interests people, and to tell 
them about it; but the bad side of it is that 
young athletes get introduced to the plea- 
sures of publicity, and that ambitious young 
men think that athletics are a short cut to 
fame. To have played in a University eleven 
is like accepting a peerage; you wear for the 
rest of your life an agreeable and honourable 
social label, and I do not think that a peerage 
is deserved, or should be accepted, at the age 
of twenty. I do not think it is a good kind 
of fame which depends on a personal perform- 
ance rather than upon a man's usefulness to 
the human race. 

The kind of contentment that I should like 
to see on the increase is the contentment of 
a man who works hard and enjoys work, both 
in itself and in the contrast it supplies to his 
leisure hours; and, further, whose leisure is 
full of varied interests, not only definite pur- 
suits, but an interest in his relations with 
others, not only of a spectatorial kind, but 
with the natural and instinctive desire to con- 
tribute to their happiness, not in a priggish 



42 At Large 

way, but from a sense of cordial good- 
fellowship. 

This programme may seem, as I have said, 
to be unambitious and prosaic, and to have 
very little that is stirring about it. But my 
belief is that it can be the most lively, sensi- 
tive, fruitful, and enjoyable programme in the 
world, because the enjoyment of it depends 
upon the very stuff of life itself, and not upon 
skimming the cream off and throwing away 
the milk. 

My critics will say that I am only appear- 
ing again from my cellar, with my hands filled 
with bottled platitudes; but if they are plati- 
tudes, by which I mean plain and obvious 
truths, why do we not find more people prac- 
tising them? What I mean by a platitude is 
a truth so obvious that it is devoid of inspira- 
tion, and has become one of the things that 
every one does so instinctively that no re- 
minder of them is necessary. Would that it 
were so in the present case! All I can say is 
that I know very few people who live their 
lives on these lines, and that most of the 
people I know find inspiration anywhere but 
in the homely stuff of life. Of course there 



Contentment 43 

are a good many people who take life stolidly 
enough, and do not desire inspiration at all; 
but I do not mean that sort of life in the 
least. I mean that it ought to be possible 
and delightful for people to live lives full of 
activity and perception and kindliness and 
joy, on very simple lines indeed; to take up 
their work day by day with an agreeable sense 
of putting out their powers, to find in the 
pageant of nature an infinite refreshment, and 
to let art and poetry lift them up into a world 
of hopes and dreams and memories; and thus 
life may become a meal to be eaten with ap- 
petite, with a wholesome appreciation of its 
pleasant savours, rather than a meal eaten in 
satiety or greediness, with a peevish repining 
that it is not more elaborate and delicate. 

I do not claim to live my own life on these 
lines. I started, as all sensitive and pleasure- 
loving natures do, with an expectation of 
finding life a much more exciting, amusing, 
and delightful thing than I have found it. I 
desired to skip from peak to peak, without 
troubling to descend into the valleys. But 
now that I have descended, partly out of curi- 
osity and partly out of inefficiency, no doubt, 



44 At Large 

into the low-lying vales, I have found them to 
be beautiful and interesting places, the hedge- 
rows full of flower and leaf, the thickets musi- 
cal with the voices of birds, the orchards 
loaded with fruit, the friendly homesteads 
rich with tranquil life and abounding in quiet, 
friendly people; and then the very peaks 
themselves, past which my way occasionally 
conducts me, have a beautiful solemnity of 
pure outline and strong upliftedness, seen 
from below, which I think they tend to lose, 
seen from the summit; and if I have spoken 
of the quieter joys, it is — I can say this with 
perfect honesty — ^because I have been pleased 
with them, as a bird is pleased with the sun- 
shine and the berries, and sings, not that the 
passers-by may admire his notes, but out of 
simple joy of heart; and, after all, it is 
enough justification, if a pilgrim or two have 
stopped upon their way to listen with a smile. 
That alone persuades me that one does no 
harm by speaking, even if there are other pas- 
sers-by who say what a tiresome note it is, 
that they have heard it a hundred times be- 
fore, and cannot think why the stupid bird 
does not vary his song. Personally, I would 



Contentment 45 

rather hear the yellow-hammer utter his sharp 
monotonous notes, with the dropping cadence 
at the end, than that he should try to imitate 
the nightingale. 

However, as I have said, I am quite willing 
to believe that the critics speak, or think they 
speak, in the interests of the public, and with 
a tender concern that the public should not be 
bored. And I will take my leave of them by 
saying, like Miss Flite, that I will ask them 
to accept a blessing, and that when I receive 
a judgment, I shall confer estates impartially. 

But my last word shall be to my readers, 
and I will beg of them not to be deceived 
either by experts or by critics; on the one 
hand, not to be frightened away from specu- 
lating and reflecting about the possible mean- 
ings of life by the people who say that no one 
under the degree of a Bachelor of Divinity 
has any right to tackle the matter; and, on 
the other hand, I would implore them to be- 
lieve that a quiet life is not necessarily a dull 
life, and that the cutting off of alcohol does 
not necessarily mean a lowering of physical 
vitality; but rather that, if they will abstain 
for a little from dependence upon excitement, 



46 At Large 

they will find their lives flooded by a new; 
kind of quality, which heightens perception 
and increases joy. Of course souls will ache 
and ailj and we have to bear the burden of our 
ancestors' weaknesses as well as the burden 
of our own; but just as, in the physical re- 
gion, diet and exercise and regularity can 
effect more cures than the strongest medi- 
cines, so, in the life of the spirit, self-restraint 
and deliberate limitation and tranquil patience 
will often lead into a vigorous and effec- 
tive channel the stream that, left to itself, 
welters and wanders among shapeless pools 
and melancholy marshes. 



Ill 



Friendship 

'T^O make oneself beloved, says an old French 
proverb, this is, after all, the test way 
to 'be useful. That is one of the deep sayings 
which children think flat, and which young 
men, and even young women, despise; and 
which a middle-aged man hears with a certain 
troubled surprise, and wonders if there is not 
something in it after all; and which old peo- 
ple discover to be true, and think with a sad 
regret of opportunities missed, and of years 
devoted, how unprofitably, to other kinds of 
usefulness ! The truth is that most of us, who 
have any ambitions at all, do not start in life 
with a hope of being useful, but rather with 
an intention of being ornamental. We think, 
like Joseph in his childish dreams, that the 
sun and moon and the eleven stars, to say 
nothing of the sheaves, are going to make 
47 



48 At Large 

obeisance to us. We want to be impressive, 
rich, beautiful, influential, admired, envied; 
and then, as we move forward, the visions fade. 
We have to be content if, in a quiet corner, a 
single sheaf gives us a nod of recognition; 
and as for the eleven stars, they seem unaware 
of our very existence! And then we make 
further discoveries : that when we have seemed 
to ourselves most impressive, we have only 
been pretentious; that riches are only a talis- 
man against poverty, and even make suffer- 
ing and pain and grief more unendurable! 
that beauty fades into stolidity or weariness; 
that influence comes mostly to people who do 
not pursue it, and that the best kind of in- 
fluence belongs to those who do not even know 
that they possess it; that admiration is but a 
brilliant husk, which may or may not con- 
tain a wholesome kernel; and as for envy, 
there is poison in that cup! And then we be- 
come aware that the best crowns have fallen 
to those who have not sought them, and that 
simple-minded and unselfish people have won 
the prize which has been denied to brilliance 
and ambition. 
That is the process which is often called dis- 



Friendship 49 

illusionment ; and it is a sad enough business 
for people who only look at one side of the 
medal, and who brood over the fact that they 
have been disappointed and have failed. For 
such as these, there follow the faded years 
of cynicism and dreariness. But that disil- 
lusionment, that humiliation, are the freshest 
and most beautiful things in the world for peo- 
ple who have real generosity of spirit, and 
whose vanity has been of a superficial kind, 
because they thus realise that these great gifts 
are real and true things, but that they must 
be deserved and not captured; and then per- 
haps such people begin their life-work afresh, 
in a humble and hopeful spirit; and if it be 
too late for them to do what they might have 
once done, they do not waste time in futile 
regret, but are grateful for ever so little love 
and tenderness. After all, they have lived, 
they have learnt by experience; and it does 
not yet appear what we shall be. Somewhere, 
far hence — who knows? — we shall make a bet- 
ter start. 

Some philosophers have devoted time and 
thought to tracing backwards all our emo- 
tions to their primal origin; and it is un- 

4 



so At Large 

doubtedly true that in the intensest and most 
passionate relationships of life — the love of a 
man for a woman, or a mother for a child — 
there is a large admixture of something phy- 
sical, instinctive^ and primal. But the fact 
also remains that there are unnumbered re- 
lationships between all sorts of apparently 
incongruous persons, of which the basis is not 
physical desire, or the protective instinct, and 
is not built up upon any hope of gain or profit 
whatsoever. All sorts of qualities may lend 
a hand to strengthen and increase and con- 
firm these bonds; but what lies at the base of 
all is simply a sort of vital congeniality. The 
friend is the person whom one is in need of, 
and by whom one is needed. Life is a sweeter, 
stronger, fuller, more gracious thing for the 
friend^s existence, whether he be near or far; 
if the friend is close at hand, that is best; 
but if he is far away he is still there to think 
of, to wonder about, to hear from, to write to, 
to share life and experience with, to serve, to 
honour, to admire, to love. But again it is 
a mistake to think that one makes a friend 
because of his or her qualities; it has nothing 
t(» do with qualities at all. If the friend has 



Friendship 51 

noble qualities, we admire them because they 
are his; if he has obviously bad and even 
noxious faults, how readily we condone them 
or overlook them! It is the person that we 
want, not what he does or says, or does not 
do or say, but what he is! that is eternally 
enough. 

Of course, it does sometimes happen that 
we think we have made a friend, and on closer 
acquaintance we find things in him that are 
alien to our very being; but even so, such a 
friendship often survives, if we have given our 
heart, or if affection has been bestowed upon 
us — affection which we cannot doubt. Some 
of the richest friendships of all are friend- 
ships between people whose whole view of life 
is sharply contrasted; and then what blessed 
energy can be employed in defending one's 
friend, in explaining him to other people, in 
minimising faults, in emphasising virtues! 
^- While the thunder lasted," says the old In- 
dian proverb, " two bad men were friends." 
That means that a common danger will some- 
times draw even malevolent people together. 
But, for most of us, the only essential thing 
to friendship is a kind of mutual trust and 



52 At Large 

confidence. It does not even shake our faith 
to know that our friend may play other peo- 
ple false; we feel by a kind of secret instinct 
that he will not play us false; and even if it 
be proved incontestably that he has played us 
false, why, we believe that he will not do so 
again, and we have all the pleasure of 
forgiveness. 

Who shall explain the extraordinary in- 
stinct that tells us, perhaps after a single 
meeting, that this or that particular person 
in some mysterious way matters to us. The 
person in question may have no attractive 
gifts of intellect or manner or personal ap- 
pearance; but there is some strange bond 
between us; we seem to have shared experi- 
ence together, somehow and somewhere; he is 
interesting, whether he speaks or is silent, 
whether he agrees or disagrees. We feel that 
in some secret region he is congenial. Est 
mihi nescio quid quod me tihi temperat 
astrum, says the old Latin poet — " There is 
something, I know not what, which yokes our 
fortunes, yours and mine." Sometimes indeed 
we are mistaken, and the momentary nearness 
fades and grows cold. But it is not often so. 



Friendship 53 

That peculiar motion of the heart, that secret 
joining of hands, is based upon something 
deep and vital, some spiritual kinship^ some 
subtle likeness. 

Of course, we differ vastly in our power of 
attracting and feeling attraction. I confess 
that, for myself, I never enter a new company 
without the hope that I may discover a friend, 
perhaps the friend, sitting there with an ex- 
pectant smile. That hope survives a thousand 
disappointments; yet most of us tend to make 
fewer friends as time goes on, partly because 
we have not so much emotional activity to 
spare, partly because we become more cau- 
tious and discreet, and partly, too, because 
we become more aware of the responsibilities 
which lie in the background of a friendship, 
and because we tend to be more shy of re- 
sponsibility. Some of us become less roman- 
tic and more comfortable; some of us become 
more diffident about what we have to give in 
return; some of us begin to feel that we can- 
not take up new ideas — none of them very 
good reasons perhaps; but still, for whatever 
reason, we make friends less easily. The main 
reason probably is that we acquire a point of 



54 At Large 

view, and it is easier to keep to that, and fit 
people in who accommodate themselves to it, 
than to modify the point of view with refer- 
ence to the new personalities. People who 
deal with life generously and large-hear tedly 
go on multiplying relationships to the end. 

Of course, as I have said, there are infinite 
grades of friendship, beginning with the 
friendship which is a mere camaraderie aris- 
ing out of habit and proximity ; and every one 
ought to be capable of forming this last re- 
lationship. The modest man, said Steven- 
son, finds his friendships ready-made; by 
which he meant that if one is generous, toler- 
ant, and ungrudging, then, instead of think- 
ing the circle in which one lives inadequate, 
confined, and unsympathetic, one gets the best 
out of it, and sees the lovable side of ordinary 
human beings. Such friendships as these can 
evoke perhaps the best and simplest kind of 
loyalty. It is said that in countries where 
oxen are used for ploughing in double har- 
ness, there are touching instances of an ox 
pining away, and even dying, if he loses his 
accustomed yoke-fellow. There are such hu- 
man friendships, sometimes formed on a blood 



Friendship 55 

relationship, such as the friendship of a 
brother and a sister; and sometimes a mar- 
riage transforms itself into this kind of 
camaraderie, and is a very blessed, quiet, beau- 
tiful thing. 

And then there are infinite gradations, such 
as the friendships of old and young, pupils 
and masters, parents and children, nurses and 
nurslings, employers and servants, all of them 
in a way unequal friendships, but capable of 
evoking the deepest and purest kinds of de- 
votion: such famous friendships have been 
Carlyle's devotion to his parents, BoswelFs to 
Johnson, Stanley's to Arnold; till at last one 
comes to the typical and essential thing known 
specially as friendship — the passionate, de- 
voted, equal bond which exists between two 
people of the same age and sex; many of which 
friendships are formed at school and college, 
and which often fade away into a sort of 
cordial glow, implying no particular commun- 
ion of life and thought. Marriage is often 
the great divorcer of such friendships, and 
circumstances generally, which sever and 
estrange; because, unless there is a constant 
interchange of thought and ideas, increasing 



56 At Large 

age tends to emphasise differences. But there 
are instances of men like Newman and Fitz- 
Gerald, who kept up a sort of romantic qual- 
ity of friendship to the end. 

I remember the daughter of an old clergy- 
man of my acquaintance telling me a pathetic 
and yet typical story of the end of one of these 
friendships. Her father and another elderly 
clergyman had been devoted friends in boy- 
hood and youth. Circumstances led to a sus- 
pension of intercourse, but at last, after a 
gap of nearly thirty years, during which the 
friends had not met, it was arranged that 
the old comrade should come and stay at the 
vicarage. As the time approached, her father 
grew visibly anxious, and coupled his fre- 
quent expression of the exquisite pleasure 
which the visit was going to bring him with 
elaborate arrangements as to which of his 
family should be responsible for the enter- 
tainment of the old comrade at every hour of 
the day: the daughters were to lead him out 
walking in the morning, his wife was to take 
him out to drive in the afternoon, and he 
was to share the smoking-room with a son, 
who was at home, in the evenings — the one ob- 



Friendship 57 

ject being that the old gentleman should not 
have to interrupt his own routine, or bear the 
burden of entertaining a guest; and he event- 
ually contrived only to meet him at meals, 
when the two old friends did not appear to 
have anything particular to say to each other. 
When the visit was over, her father used to 
allude to his guest with a half-compassionate 
air : — ^^ Poor Harry, he has aged terribly — I 
never saw a man so changed; with such a 
limited range of interests, dear fellow, he has 
quite lost his old humour. Well, well! it was 
a great pleasure to see him here. He was very 
anxious that we should go to stay with him, 
but I am afraid that will be rather diificult to 
manage; one is so much at a loose end in a 
strange house, and then one's correspondence 
gets into arrears. Poor old Harry! What a 
lively creature he was up at Trinity to be 
sure ! " Thus with a sigh dust is committed 
to dust. 

" What passions our friendships were ! " 
said Thackeray to FitzGerald, speaking of 
University days. There is a shadow of melan- 
choly in the saying, because it implies that 
for Thackeray, at all events, that kind of glow 



58 At Large 

had faded out of life. Perhaps — who knows? 
— he had accustomed himself, with those 
luminous, observant, humorous eyes, to look 
too deep into the heart of man, to study too 
closely and too laughingly the seamy side, the 
strange contrast between man's hopes and his 
performances, his dreams and his deeds. 
Ought one to be ashamed if that kind of gen- 
erous enthusiasm, that intensity of admira- 
tion, that vividness of sympathy die out of 
one's heart? Is it possible to keep alive the 
warmth, the colour of youth, suffusing all the 
objects near it with a lively and rosy glow? 
Some few people seem to find it possible, and 
can add to it a kind of rich tolerance, a lav- 
ish affectionateness, which pierces even deeper, 
and sees even more clearly, than the old 
partial idealisation. Such a large-hearted af- 
fection is found as a rule most often in people 
whose lives have brought them into intimate 
connection with their fellow-creatures — in 
priests, doctors, teachers, who see others not 
in their guarded and superficial moments, but 
in hours of sharp and poignant emotion. In 
many cases the bounds of sympathy narrow 
themselves into the family and the home — 



Friendship 59 

because there only are men brought into an 
intimate connection with human emotion; be- 
cause to many people, and to the Anglo-Saxon 
race in particular, emotional situations are a 
strain, and only professional duty, which is a 
strongly rooted instinct in the Anglo-Saxon 
temperament, keeps the emotional muscles 
agile and responsive. 

Another thing which tends to extinguish 
friendships is that many of the people who 
desire to form them, and who do form 
them, wish to have the pleasures of friendship 
without the responsibilities. In the self-aban- 
donment of friendship we become aware of 
qualities and strains in the friend which we do 
not wholly like. One of the most dilficult things 
to tolerate in a friend are faults which are 
similar without being quite the same. A com- 
mon quality, for instance, in the Anglo-Saxon 
race, is a touch of vulgarity, which is indeed 
the quality that makes them practically suc- 
cessful. A great many Anglo-Saxon people 
have a certain snobbishness, to give it a hard 
name; it is probably the poison of the 
feudal system lurking in our veins. We ad- 
mire success unduly; we like to be respected, 



6o At Large 

to have a definite label, to know the right 
people. 

I remember once seeing a friendship of a 
rather promising kind forming between two 
people, one of whom had a touch of what I 
may call " county " vulgarity, by which I mean 
an undue recognition of " the glories of our 
birth and state." It was a deep-seated 
fault, and emerged in a form which is not un- 
common among people of that type — namely, 
a tendency to make friends with people of 
rank, coupled with a constant desire to detect 
snobbishness in other people. There is no 
surer sign of innate vulgarity than that; it 
proceeds, as a rule, from a dim consciousness 
of the fault, combined with the natural shame 
of a high-mined nature for being subject to it. 
In this particular case the man in question 
sincerely desired to resist the fault, but he 
could not avoid making himself slightly more 
deferential, and consequently slightly more 
agreeable, to persons of position. If he 
had not suffered from the fault, he would 
never have given the matter a thought at all. 

The other partner in the friendly enterprise 
had a touch of a different kind of snobbish- 



Friendship 6i 

ness — the middle-class professional snobbish- 
ness, which pays an undue regard to success, 
and gravitates to effective and distinguished 
people. As the friendship matured, each be- 
came unpleasantly conscious of the other's 
defect, while remaining unconscious of his 
own. The result was a perpetual little fric- 
tion on the point. If both could have been 
perfectly sincere, and could have confessed 
their weakness frankly, no harm would have 
been done. But each was so sincerely anxious 
to present an unblemished soul to the other's 
view, that they could not arrive at an under- 
standing on the point; each desired to appear 
more disinterested than he was ; and so, after 
coming together to a certain extent — both 
were fine natures — the presence of grit in the 
machinery made itself gradually felt, and the 
friendship melted away. It was a case of each 
desiring the unalloyed pleasure of an admir- 
ing friendship, without accepting the respon- 
sibility of discovering that the other was not 
perfection, and bearing that discovery loyally 
and generously. For this is the worst of a 
friendship that begins in idealisation rather 
than in comradeship; and this is the danger 



62 At Large 

of all people who idealise. When two such 
come together and feel a mutual attraction, 
they display instinctively and unconsciously 
the best of themselves; but melancholy dis- 
coveries supervene; and then what generally 
happens is that the idealising friend is angry 
with the other for disappointing his hopes, not 
with himself for drawing an extravagant 
picture. 

Such friendships have a sort of emotional 
sensuality about them; and to be dismayed 
by later discoveries is to decline upon Rous- 
seau's vice of handing in his babies to the 
foundling hospital, instead of trying to bring 
them up honestly; what lies at the base of it 
is the indolent shirking of the responsibilities 
for the natural consequences of friendship. 
The mistake arises from a kind of selfishness 
that thinks more of what it wants and desires 
to get than of taking what there is soberly 
and gratefully. 

It is often said that it is the duty and privi- 
lege of a friend to warn his friend faithfully 
against his faults. I believe that this is a 
wholly mistaken principle. The essence of 
the situation is rather a cordial partnership, 



Friendship 63 

of which the basis is liberty. What I mean by 
liberty is not a freedom from responsibility, 
but an absence of obligation. I do not, of 
course, mean that one is to take all one can 
get and give as little as one likes, but rather 
that one must respect one's friend enough — 
and that is implied in the establishment of 
the relation — to abstain from directing him, 
unless he desires and asks for direction. The 
telling of faults may be safely left to hostile 

critics, and to what Sheridan calls " d d 

good-natured " acquaintances. But the friend 
must take for granted that his friend desires, 
in a general way, what is good and true, even 
though he may pursue it on different lines. 
One's duty is to encourage and believe in one's 
friend, not to disapprove of and to censure him. 
One loves him for what he is, not for what he 
might be if he would only take one's advice. 
The point is that it must be all a free gift, not 
a mutual improvement society, — unless, in- 
deed, that is the basis of the compact. After 
all, a man can only feel responsible to God. 
One goes astray, no doubt, like a sheep that is 
lost; but it is not the duty of another sheep 
to butt one back into the right way, unless 



64 At Large 

indeed one appeals for help. One may have 
pastors and directors, but they can never be 
equal friends. If there is to be superiority 
in friendship, the lesser must willingly crown 
the greater; the greater must not ask to be 
crowned. The secure friendship is that which 
begins in comradeship, and moves into a more 
generous and emotional region. Then there is 
no need to demand or to question loyalty, be- 
cause the tie has been welded by many a simple 
deed, many a frank word. The ideal is a per- 
fect frankness and sincerity, which lays bare 
the soul as it is, without any false shame or 
any fear of misunderstanding. A friendship 
of this kind can be one of the purest, bright- 
est, and strongest things in the world. Yet 
how rare it is! What far oftener happens is 
that two people, in a sensitive and emotional 
mood, are brought together. They begin by 
comparing experiences, they search their 
memories for beautiful and suggestive things, 
and each feels, " This nature is the true com- 
plement of my own; what light it seems to 
shed on my own problems; how subtle, how 
appreciative it is ! " Then the process of dis- 
covery begins. Instead of the fair distant 



Friendship 65 

city, all spires and towers, which we discerned 
in the distance in a sort of glory, we find that 
there are crooked lanes, muddy crossings, dull 
market-places, tiresome houses. Odd mis- 
shapen figures, fretful and wearied, plod 
through the streets or look out at windows; 
here is a ruin, with doleful creatures moping 
in the shade; we overturn a stone, and blind 
uncanny things writhe away from the light. 
We begin to reflect that it is after all much 
like other places, and that our fine romantic 
view of it was due to some accident of light 
and colour, some transfiguring mood of our 
own mind; and then we set out in search of 
another city which we see crowning a hill on 
the horizon, and leave the dull place to its own 
commonplace life. But to begin with com- 
radeship is to explore the streets and lanes 
first; and then day by day, as we go up and 
down in the town, we become aware of its 
picturesqueness and charm; we realise that it 
has an intense and eager life of its own, which 
we can share as a dweller, though we cannot 
touch it as a visitor ; and so the wonder grows, 
and the patient love of home. And we have 
surprises, too: we enter a door in a wall that 
5 



66 At Large 

we have not seen before, and we are in a shrine 
full of fragrant incense-smoke; the fallen day 
comes richly through stained windows; fig- 
ures move at the altar, where some holy rite 
is being celebrated. The truth is that a 
friendship cannot be formed in the spirit of 
a tourist, who is above all in search of the 
romantic and the picturesque. Sometimes in- 
deed the wandering traveller may become the 
patient and contented inhabitant; but it is 
generally the other way, and the best friend- 
ships are most often those that seem at first 
sight dully made for us by habit and prox- 
imity, and which reveal to us by slow degrees 
their beauty and their worth. 



Thus far had I written, when it came into 
my mind that I should like to see the reflec- 
tion of my beliefs in some other mind, to sub- 
mit them to the test of what I may perhaps be 
forgiven for calling a spirit-level! And so I 
read my essay to two wise, kindly, and gracious 
ladies, who have themselves often indeed 
graduated in friendship, and taken the highest 
honours. I will say nothing of the tender 



Friendship 67 

courtesy with which they made their head- 
breaking balms precious; I told them that I 
had not finished my essay, and that before I 
launched upon my last antistrophe, I wanted 
inspiration. I cannot here put down the 
phrases they used, but I felt that they spoke 
in symbols, like two initiated persons, for 
whom the corn and the wine and the oil of the 
sacrifice stand for very secret and beautiful 
mysteries; but they said in effect that I had 
been depicting, and not untruly, the outer 
courts and corridors of friendship. What 
they told me of the inner shrine I shall pres- 
ently describe; but when I asked them to 
say whether they could tell me instances of 
the best and highest kind of friendship, exist- 
ing and increasing and perfecting itself be- 
tween two men, or between a man and a 
woman, not lovers or wedded, they found a 
great difficulty in doing so. We sifted our 
common experiences of friendships, and we 
could find but one or two such, and these had 
somewhat lost their bloom. It came then to 
this: that in the emotional region, many wo- 
men, but very few men, can form the highest 
kind of tie; and we agreed that men tended 



68 At Large 

to find what they needed in marriage, because 
they were rather interested in than dependent 
upon personal emotion, and because practical 
life, as the years went on — the life of causes 
and movements and organisations and ideas 
and investigations — tended to absorb the en- 
ergies of men; and that they found their 
emotional life in home ties; and that the man 
who lived for emotional relations would tend 
to be thought, if not to be, a sentimentalist; 
but that the real secret lay with women, and 
with men of perhaps a feminine fibre. And all 
this was transfused by a kind of tender pity, 
without any touch of complacency or superi- 
ority, such as a mother might have for the 
whispered hopes of a child who is lost in tiny 
material dreams. But I gathered that there 
was a region in which the heart could be en- 
tirely absorbed in a deep and beautiful ad- 
miration for some other soul, and rejoice 
whole-heartedly in its nobleness and greatness; 
so that no question of gaining anything, or 
even of being helped to anything, came in, any 
more than one who has long been pent in 
shadow and gloom and illness, and comes out 
for the first time into the sun, thinks of any 



Friendship 69 

benefits that he may receive from the caressing 
sunlight; he merely knows that it is joy and 
happiness and life to be there, and to feel the 
warm light comfort him and make him glad; 
and all this I had no difficulty in understand- 
ing, for I knew the emotion that they spoke 
of, though I called it by a different name. I 
saw that it was love indeed, but love infinitely 
purified, and with all the sense of possession 
that mingles with masculine love subtracted 
from it; and how such a relation might grow 
and increase, until there arose a sort of secret 
and vital union of spirit, more real indeed than 
time and space, so that, even if this were di- 
vorced and sundered by absence, or the clouded 
mind, or death itself, there could be no shadow 
of doubt as to the permanence of the tie; and 
a glance passed between the two as they 
spoke, which made me feel like one who hears 
an organ rolling, and voices rising in sweet 
harmonies inside some building, locked and 
barred, which he may not enter. I could not 
doubt that the music was there, while I knew 
that for some dulness or belatedness I was 
myself shut out; not, indeed, that I doubted 
of the truth of what was said, but I was in the 



70 At Large 

position of the old saint who said that he be- 
lieved, and prayed to One to help his unbelief. 
For I saw that though I projected the lines of 
my own experience infinitely, adding loyalty 
to loyalty, and admiration to admiration, it 
was all on a different plane. This interfusion 
of personality, this vital union of soul, I could 
not doubt it! but it made me feel my own 
essential isolation still more deeply, as when 
the streaming sunlight strikes warmth and 
glow out of the fire, revealing crumbling ashes 
where a moment before had been a heart of 
flame. 

" Ah te mesB si partem animae rapit 
Maturior vis, quid moror altera?" — 

" Ah, if the violence of fate snatch thee from 
me, thou half of my soul, how can I, the other 
half, still linger here?" So wrote the old 
cynical, worldly, Latin poet of his friend — 
that poet whom, for all his deftness and grace, 
we are apt to accuse of a certain mundane 
heartlessness, though once or twice there 
flickers up a sharp flame from the comfort- 
able warmth of the pile. Had he the secret 
hidden in his heart all the time? If one could 



Friendship 71 

dream of a nearness like that, which doubts 
nothing, and questions nothing, but which 
teaches the soul to move in as unconscious a 
unison with another soul as one's two eyes 
move, so that the brain cannot distinguish be- 
tween the impressions of each, would not that 
be worth the loss of all that we hold most 
sweet? We pay a price for our qualities; the 
thistle cannot become the vine, or the oak the 
rose, by admiration or desire. But we need 
not doubt of the divine alchemy that gives 
good gifts to others, and denies them to our- 
selves. And thus I can gratefully own that 
there are indeed these high mysteries of friend- 
ship, and I can be glad to discern them afar 
off, as the dweller on the high moorland, in 
the wind-swept farm, can see, far away in the 
woodland valley, the smoke go up from happy 
cottage-chimneys, nestled in leaves, and the 
spire point a hopeful finger up to heaven. Life 
would be a poorer thing if we had all that we 
desired, and it is permitted to hope that if we 
are faithful with our few things, we may be 
made rulers over many things! 



IV 
Humour 

THERE is a pleasant story of a Cambridge 
undergraduate finding it necessary to 
expound the four allegorical figures that crown 
the parapet of Trinity Library. They are the 
Learned Muses, as a matter of fact. " What 
are those figures, Jack?" said an ardent sis- 
ter, labouring under the false feminine im- 
pression that men like explaining things. 
" Those," said Jack, observing them for the 
first time in his life — '^ those are Faith, Hope, 
and Charity, of course." " Oh ! but there are 
four of them," said the irrepressible fair one. 
"What is the other?" Jack, not to be dis- 
mayed, gave a hasty glance; and, observing 
what may be called philosophical instru- 
ments in the hands of the statue, said firmly, 
" That is Geography." It made a charming 
quaternion. 

72 



Humour 73 

I have often felt, myself, that the time has 
come to raise another figure to the hierarchy 
of Christian graces. Faith, Hope, and Char- 
ity were sufficient in a more elementary and 
barbarous age; but, now that the world has 
broadened somewhat, I think an addition to 
the trio is demanded. A man may be faith- 
ful, hopeful, and charitable, and yet leave much 
to be desired. He may be useful, no doubt, 
with that equipment, but he may also be both 
tiresome and even absurd. The fourth quality 
that I should like to see raised to the highest 
rank among Christian graces is the Grace of 
Humour. 

I do not think that Humour has ever en- 
joyed its due repute in the ethical scale. The 
possession of it saves a man from priggish- 
ness; and the possession of faith, hope, and 
charity does not. Indeed, not only do these 
three virtues not save a man from priggish- 
ness — they sometimes even plunge him in ir- 
reclaimable depths of superiority. I suppose 
that when Christianity was first making itself 
felt in the world the one quality needful was 
a deep-seated and enthusiastic earnestness. 
There is nothing that makes life so enjoyable 



74 At Large 

as being in earnest. It is not the light, laugh- 
ter-loving, jocose people who have the best time 
in the world. They have a checkered career. 
They skip at times upon the hills of merri- 
ment, but they also descend gloomily at other 
times into the valleys of dreariness. But the 
man who is in earnest is generally neither 
merry nor dreary. He has not time to be 
either. The early Christians, engaged in leav- 
ening the world, had no time for levity or list- 
lessness. A pioneer cannot be humorous. 
But now that the world is leavened and Christ- 
ian principles are theoretically, if not prac- 
tically, taken for granted, a new range of 
qualities comes in sight. By humour I do not 
mean a taste for irresponsible merriment; for, 
though humour is not a necessarily melan- 
choly thing, in this imperfect world the hu- 
mourist sighs as often as he smiles. What I 
mean by it is a keen perception of the rich in- 
congruities and absurdities of life, its undue 
solemnity, its guileless pretentiousness. To 
be true humour, it must not be at all a cynical 
thing — as soon as it becomes cynical it loses 
all its natural grace; it is an essentially ten- 
der-hearted quality, apt to find excuse, ready 



Humour 75 

to condone, eager to forgive. The professor of 
it can never be ridicnlous, or heavy, or supe- 
rior. Wit, of course, is a very small province 
of humour: wit is to humour what lightning 
is to the electric fluid — a vivid, bright, crack- 
ling symptom of it in certain conditions; but 
a man may be deeply and essentially humor- 
ous and never say a witty thing in his life. 
To be witty, one has to be fanciful, intellect- 
ual, deft, light-hearted; and the humourist 
need be none of these things. 

In religion, the absence of a due sense of 
humour has been the cause of some of our 
worst disasters. All rational people know 
that what has done most to depress and dis- 
count religion is ecclesiasticism. The spirit 
of ecclesiasticism is the spirit that confuses 
proportions, that loves what is unimportant, 
that hides great principles under minute rules, 
that sacrifices simplicity to complexity, that 
adores dogma, and definition, and labels of 
every kind, that substitutes the letter for the 
spirit. The greatest misfortune that can be- 
fall religion is that it should become logical, 
that it should evolve a reasoned system from 
insufficient data ; but humour abhors logic, and 



76 At Large 

cannot pin its faith on insecure deductions. 
The heaviest burden which religion can have 
to bear is the burden of tradition, and humour 
is the determined foe of everything that is 
conventional and traditional. The Pharisaical 
spirit loves precedent and authority; the hu- 
morous spirit loves all that is swift and 
shifting and subversive and fresh. One of the 
reasons why the orthodox heaven is so depress- 
ing a place is that there seems to be no room 
in it for laughter; it is all harmony and meek- 
ness, sanctified by nothing but the gravest of 
smiles. What wonder that humanity is de- 
jected at the thought of an existence from 
which all possibility of innocent absurdity and 
kindly mirth is subtracted — the only things 
which have persistently lightened and beguiled 
the earthly pilgrimage ! That is why the death 
of a humorous person has so deep an added 
tinge of melancholy about it — because it is 
apt to seem indecorous to think of what 
was his most congenial and charming trait 
still finding scope for its exercise. We 
are never likely to be able to tolerate the 
thought of death while we continue to think 
of it as a thing which will rob humanity v 



Humour 77 

of some of its richest and most salient 
characteristics. 

Even the ghastly humour of Milton is a 
shade better than this. It will be remem- 
bered that he makes the archangel say to 
Adam that astronomy has been made by the 
Creator a complicated subject, in order that 
the bewilderment of scientific men may be a 
matter of entertainment to Him! 

He His fabric of the Heavens 
Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move 
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide. 

Or, again, we may remember the harsh con- 
tortions of dry cachinnation indulged in by 
the rebel spirits, when they have succeeded in 
toppling over with their artillery the armed 
hosts of Seraphim. Milton certainly did not 
intend to subtract all humour from the celes- 
tial regions. The only pity was that he had 
not himself emerged beyond the childish stage, 
which finds its deepest amusement in the dis- ^ 
asters and catastrophes of stately persons. 

It may be asked whether we have any war- 
rant in the Gospel for the Christian exercise 
of humour. I have no doubt of it myself. The 



78 At Large 

image of the children in the market-place who 
cannot get their peevish companions to join in 
games, whether merry or mournful, as illus- 
trating the attitude of the Pharisees who 
blamed John the Baptist for asceticism and 
Christ for sociability, is a touch of real hu- 
mour; and the story of the importunate widow 
with the unjust judge, who betrayed so naively 
his principle of judicial action by saying 
" Though I fear not God, neither regard men, 
yet will I avenge this widow, lest by her con- 
tinual coming she weary me," must — I cannot 
believe otherwise — have been intended to pro- 
voke the hearers' mirth. There is not, of 
course, any superabundance of such instances, 
but Christ's reporters were not likely to be on 
the look-out for sayings of this type. Yet I 
find it impossible to believe that One who 
touched all the stops of the human heart, and 
whose stories are among the most beautiful 
and vivid things ever said in the world, can 
have exercised His unequalled power over hu- 
man nature without allowing His hearers to 
be charmed by many humorous and incisive 
touches, as well as by more poetical and emo- 
tional images. No one has ever swayed the 



Humour 7q 

human mind in so unique a fashion without 
holding in his hand all the strings that move 
and stir the faculties of delighted apprehen- 
sion; and of these faculties humour is one 
of the foremost. The amazing lightness of / 
(.'hrist's touch upon life, the way in which His 
words plumbed the depths of personality, 
make me feel abundantly sure that there was 
no dreary sense of overwhelming seriousness 
in His relations with His friends and disciples^ 
Believing as we do that He was Perfect Man, 
we surely cannot conceive of one of the sweet- 
est and most enlivening of all human qualities 
as being foreign to His character. 

Otherwise there is little trace of humour 
in the New Testament. St. Paul, one would 
think, would have had little sympathy with 
humourists. He was too fiery, too militant, 
too much preoccupied with the working out 
^ of his ideas, to have the leisure or the inclina- 
tion to take stock of humanity. Indeed I have 
sometimes thought that if he had had some 
touch of the quality, he might have given a dif- 
ferent bias to the faith; his application of the 
method which he had inherited from the Jew- 
ish school of theology, coupled with his own 



< 



8o At Large 

fervid rhetoric, was the first step, I have often 
thought, in disengaging the Christian develop- 
ment from the simplicity and emotion of the 
first unclouded message, in transferring the 
faith from the region of pure conduct and 
sweet tolerance into a province of fierce defi- 
nition and intellectual interpretation. 

I think it was Goethe who said that Greek 
was the sheath into which the dagger of the 
human mind fitted best ; and it is true that one 
finds among the Greeks the brightest efflores- 
cence of the human mind. Who shall account 
for that extraordinary and fragrant flower, 
the flower of Greek culture, so perfect in 
curve and colour, in proportion and scent, 
opening so suddenly, in such a strange isola- 
tion, so long ago, upon the human stock? 
/The Greeks had the wonderful combination of 
V childish zest side by side with mature taste; 
x'apt5> as they called it — a perfect charm, an 
instinctive grace — was the mark of their spirit. 
And we should naturally expect to find in 
their literature the same sublimation of hu- 
mour that we find in their other qualities. 
Unfortunately the greater number of their 
comedies are lost. Of Menander we have but a 



Humour 8i 

few tiny fragments, as it were, of a delectable 
vase; but in Aristophanes there is a delicious 
levity, an incomparable prodigality of laugh- 
ter-moving absurdities, which has possibly 
never been equalled. Side by side with that 
is the tender and charming irony of Plato, 
who is even more humorous, if less witty, than 
Aristophanes. But the Greeks seem to have 
been alone in their application of humour to 
literature. In the older world literature 
tended to be rather a serious, pensive, stately 
thing, concerned with human destiny and ar- 
tistic beauty. One searches in vain for hu-\ 
mour in the energetic and ardent Roman mind. 
Their very comedies were mostly adaptations 
from the Greek. I have never myself been 
able to discern the humour of Terence or 
Plautus to any great extent. The humour of 
the latter is of a brutal and harsh kind; and 
it has always been a marvel to me that Luther 
said that the two books he would take to be 
his companions on a desert island would be 
Plautus and the Bible. Horace and Martial 
have a certain deft appreciation of human 
weakness, but it is of the nature of smartness 
rather than of true humour — the wit of the 



82 At Large 

satirist rather; and then the curtain falls on 
the older world. 

When humour next makes its appearance, in 
France and England pre-eminently, we realise 
that we are in the presence of a far larger and 
finer quality; and now we have, so to speak, 
whole bins full of liquors, of various brands 
and qualities, from the mirthful absurdities 
of the English, the pawky gravity of the 
Scotch, to the dry and sparkling beverage of 
the American. To give an historical sketch of 
the growth and development of modern hu- 
mour would be a task that might well claim 
the energies of some literary man ; it seems to 
me surprising that some German philosopher 
has not attempted a scientific classification of 
the subject. It would perhaps be best done 
by a man without appreciation of humour, be- 
cause only then could one hope to escape be- 
ing at the mercy of preferences; it would have 
to be studied purely as a phenomenon, a symp- 
tom of the mind; and nothing but an over 
whelming love of classification would carry a 
student past the sense of its unimportance. 
But here I would rather attempt not to find 
a formula or a definition for humour, but to 



Humour 83 

discover what it is, like argon, by eliminating 
other characteristics until the evasive quality 
alone remains. 

It lies deep in nature. The peevish mouth 
and the fallen eye of the plaice, the helpless 
rotundity of the sunfish, the mournful gape 
and rolling glance of the goldfish, the furious 
and ineffective mien of the barndoor fowl, the 
wild grotesqueness of the babyroussa and the 
wart-hog, the crafty solemn eye of the parrot, 
— if such things as these do not testify to a 
sense of humour in the Creative Spirit, it is 
hard to account for the fact that in man a 
perception is implanted which should find such 
sights pleasurably entertaining from infancy 
upwards. I suppose the root of the matter 
is that, insensibly comparing these facial at- 
tributes with the expression of humanity, one 
credits the animals above described with the 
emotions which they do not necessarily feel; 
yet even so it is hard to analyse, because 
grotesque exaggerations of human features 
which are perfectly normal and natural seem 
calculated to move the amusement of human- 
ity quite instinctively. A child is apt to be 
alarmed at first by what is grotesque, and, 



84 At Large 

when once reassured, to find in it a matter of 
delight. Perhaps the mistake we make is to 

^credit Creative Spirit with human emotions; 
but, on the other hand, it is difficult to see how 
complex emotions, not connected with any 
material needs and impulses, can be found 
existing in organisms, unless the same emo- 
tions exist in the mind of their Creator. If 
the thrush bursts into song on the bare bush 
at evening, if the child smiles to see the bulg- 
ing hairy cactus, there must be, I think, some- 
thing joyful and smiling at the heart, the 
inmost cell of nature, loving beauty and laugh- 

f ter ; indeed, beauty and mirth must be the nat- 
ural signs of health and content. And then 
there strike in upon the mind two thoughts: 

( Is, perhaps, the basis of humour a kind of 
selfish security? Does one primarily laugh at 
all that is odd, grotesque, broken, ill at ease, 
fantastic, because such things heighten the 
sense of one's own health and security? I do 
not mean that this is the flower of modern 
humour; but is it not, perhaps, the root? Is 
not the basis of laughter perhaps the purely 
childish and selfish impulse to delight not in 
the sufferings of others, but in the sense which 



Humour 85 

all distorted things minister to one — that one 
is temporarily, at least, more blest than they? 
A child does not laugh for pure happiness — 
when it is happiest, it is most grave and sol- 
emn; but when the sense of its health and 
soundness is brought home to it poignantly, 
then it laughs aloud, just as it laughs at the 
pleasant pain of being tickled, because the 
tiny uneasiness throws into relief its sense of 
secure well-being. 

And the further thought — a deep and strange 
one — is this: We see how all mortal things 
have a certain curve or cycle of life — youth, 
maturity, age. May not that law of being run 
deeper still? We think of nature being ever 
strong, ever young, ever joyful; but may not 
the very shadow of sorrow and suffering in 
the world be the sign that nature too grows 
old and weary? May there have been a dim 
age, far back beyond history or fable or scien- 
tific record, when she, too, was young and light- 
hearted? The sorrows of the world are at 
present not like the sorrows of age, but the 
sorrows of maturity. There is no decrepitude 
in the world: its heart is restless, vivid, and 
hopeful yet; its melancholy is as the melan- 



86 At Large 

choly of youth — a melancholy deeply tinged 
with beauty; it is full of boundless visions and 
eager dreams; though it is thwarted^ it be- 
lieves in its ultimate triumph ; and the growth 
of humour in the world may be just the 
shadow of hard fact falling upon the generous 
vision, for that is where humour resides: 
youth believes glowingly that all things are 
possible, but maturity sees that to hope is not 
to execute, and acquiesces smilingly in the 
incongruity between the programme and the 
performance. 

Humour resides in the perception of limita- 
tion, in discerning how often the conventional 
principle is belied by the actual practice. 
The old world was full of youthful sense of its 
own importance; it held that all things were 
created for man — that the flower was de- 
signed to yield him colour and fragrance, that 
the beast of the earth was made to give him 
food and sport. This philosophy was summed 
up in the phrase that mem was the measure 
of all things; but now we have learned that man 
is but the most elaborate of created organisms, 
and that just as there was a time when man 
did not exist, so there may be a time to come 



Humour 87 

when beings infinitely more elaborate may 
look back to man as we look back to trilobites 
— those strange creatures, like huge wood-lice, 
that were in their day the glory and crown of 
creation. Perhaps our dreams of supremacy 
and finality may be in reality the absurdest 
thing in the world for their pomposity and 
pretentiousness. Who can say? 

But to retrace our steps awhile. It seems 
that the essence of humour is a certain per- 
ception of incongruity. Let us take a single 
instance. There is a story of a drunken man 
who was observed to feel his way several times 
all round the railings of a London square, 
with the intention apparently of finding some 
way of getting in. At last he sat down, cov- 
ered his face with his hands and burst into 
tears, saying, with deep pathos, ^' I am shut 
in ! '^ In a sense it was true : if the rest of the 
world was his prison, and the garden of the 
square represented liberty, he was undoubtedly 
incarcerated. Or, again, take the story of the 
Scotchman returning from a convivial occa- 
sion, who had jumped carefully over the 
shadows of the lamp-posts, but on coming to 
the shadow of the church-tower ruefully took 



8S At Large 

off his boots and stockings, and turned his 
trousers up, saying, " I '11 ha'e to wade." The 
reason why the stories of drunken persons are 
often so indescribably humorous, though, no 
doubt, highly deplorable in a Christian coun- 
try, is that the victim loses all sense of prob- 
ability and proportion, and laments unduly 
over an altogether imaginary difficulty. The 
appreciation of such situations is in reality 
the same as the common and barbarous form 
of humour, of which we have already spoken, 
which consists of being amused at the disas- 
ters which befall others. The stage that is but 
slightly removed from the lowest stage is the 
theory of practical jokes, the humour of which 
is the pleasure of observing the actions of a 
person in a disagreeable predicament which 
is not so serious as the victim supposes. And 
thus we get to the region illustrated by the 
two stories I have told, where the humour lies 
in the observation of one in a predicament 
that appears to be of a tragic character, when 
the tragic element is purely imaginary. And 
so we pass into the region of intellectual 
humour, which may be roughly illustrated by 
such sayings as that of George Sand that 



Humour 89 

nothing is such a restorative as rhetoric, or 
the claim advanced by a patriot that Shake- 
speare was undoubtedly a Scotchman, on the 
ground that his talents would justify the 
supposition. The humour of George Sand's 
epigram depends upon the perception that 
rhetoric, which ought to be based upon a pro- 
found conviction, an overwhelming passion, an 
intense enthusiasm, is often little more than 
the abandonment of a personality to a mood 
of intoxicating ebullience; while the humour 
of the Shakespeare story lies in a sense of the 
way in which a national predilection will 
override all reasonable evidence. 

It will be recognised how much of our hu- 
mour depends upon our keen perception of 
the weaknesses and imperfections of other 
nationalities. A great statesman once said 
that if a Scotchman applied for a post and 
was unsuccessful, his one object became to 
secure the post for another Scotchman; while 
if an Irishman made an unsuccessful applica- 
tion, his only aim was to prevent any other 
Irishman from obtaining the post. That is a 
humorous way of contrasting the jealous 
patriotism of the Scot with the passionate 



go At Large 

individualism of the Celt. The curious factor 
of this species of humour is that we are en- 
tirely unable to recognise the typicality of the 
caricatures which other nations draw of our- 
selves. A German fails to recognise the Eng- 
lish idea of the German as a man who, after 
a meal of gigantic proportions and incredible 
potations, amidst the smoke of endless cigars, 
will discuss the terminology of the absolute, 
and burst into tears over a verse of poetry or 
a strain of music. Similarly the Englishman 
cannot divine what is meant by the English- 
man of the French stage, with his long 
whiskers, his stiff pepper-and-salt clothes, 
walking arm-in-arm with a raw-boned wife, 
short'Skirted and long-toothed, with a bevy 
of short-skirted and long-toothed daughters 
walking behind. 

But if it requires a robust humourist to per- 
ceive the absurdity of his own nation, what 
intensity of humour is required for a man to 
see the absurdity of himself! To acquiesce in 
appearing ridiculous is the height of philoso- 
phy. We are glad enough to amuse other peo- 
ple intentionally, but how many men does one 
know who do not resent amusing other people 



Humour 91 

unintentionally? Yet if one were a true phi- 
lanthropist, how delighted we ought to be to 
afford to others a constant feast of innocent 
and joyful contemplation. 

But the fact which emerges from all these 
considerations is the fact that we do not give 
humour its place of due dignity in the moral 
and emotional scale. The truth is that we in 
England have fallen into a certain groove of 
humour of late, the humour of paradox. The 
formula which lies at the base of our present 
output of humour is the formula, " Whatever 
is, is wrong." The method has been over- 
organised, and the result is that humour can 
be manufactured in unlimited quantities. The 
type of such humour is the saying of the hu- 
mourist that he went about the world with one 
dread constantly hanging over him — ^' the 
dread of not being misunderstood." I would 
not for a moment deny the quality of such 
humour, but it grows vapid and monotonous. 
It is painful to observe the clever young man 
of the present day, instead of aiming at the 
expression of things beautiful and emotional 
which he is often well equipped to produce, 
with all the charm of freshness and indiscre- 



92 At Large 

tion, turn aside to smart writing of a cynical 
type, because he cannot bear to be thought 
immature. He wants to see the effect of his 
clevernesSj and the envious smile of the 
slower-witted is dearer to him than the secret 
kindling of a sympathetic mind. Real humour 
is a broader and a deeper thing, and it can 
hardly be attained until a man has had some 
acquaintance with the larger world; and that 
very experience, in natures that are emotional 
rather than patient, often tends to extinguish 
humour because of the knowledge that life is 
really rather too sad and serious a business 
to afford amusement. The man who becomes 
a humourist is the man who contrives to re- 
tain a certain childlike zest and freshness of 
mind side by side with a large and tender 
tolerance. This state of mind is not one to 
be diligently sought after. The humourist 
nascitur non fit. One sees young men of ir- 
responsible levity drawn into the interest of a 
cause or a profession, and we say sadly of 
them that they have lost their sense of hu- 
mour. They are probably both happier and 
more useful for having lost it. The humourist 
is seldom an apostle or a leader. But one does 



Humour 93 

occasionally find a man of real genius who 
adds to a deep and vital seriousness a de- 
lightful perception of the superficial absurdi- 
ties of life; who is like a river, at once strong 
and silent beneath, with sunny ripples and 
bright water-breaks upon the surface. Most 
men must be content to flow turbid and sullen, 
turning the mills of life or bearing its barges; 
others may dash and flicker through existence, 
like a shallow stream. Perhaps, indeed, it 
may be said that to be a real humourist there 
must be a touch of hardness somewhere, a 
bony carapace, because we seldom see one of 
very strong and ardent emotions who is a 
true humourist ; and this is, I suppose, the rea- 
son why women, as a rule, are so far less hu- 
morous than men. We have to pay a price 
for our good qualities; and though I had rather 
be strong, affectionate, loyal, noble-minded, 
than be the best humourist in the world, yet 
if a gift of humour be added to these graces 
you have a combination that is absolutely 
irresistible, because you have a perfect sense 
of proportion that never allows emotion to 
degenerate into gush, or virtue into rigidity; 
and thus I sav that humour is a kind of divine 



94 At Large 

and crowning grace in a character, because it 
means an artistic sense of proportion, a true 
and vital tolerance, a power of infinite 
forgiveness. 



V 

Travel 

THERE are many motives that impel us 
to travel, to change our sky, as Horace 
calls it — good motives and bad, selfish and un- 
selfish, noble and ignoble. With some people 
it is pure restlessness; the tedium of ordinary 
life weighs on them, and travel, they think, 
will distract them; people travel for the sake 
of health, or for business reasons, or to accom- 
pany some one else, or because other people 
travel. And these motives are neither good 
nor bad, they are simply sufficient. Some peo- 
ple travel to enlarge their minds or to write 
a book; and the worst of travelling for such 
reasons is that it so often implants in the 
traveller, when he returns, a desperate desire 
to enlarge other people's minds too. Unhappily, 
it needs an extraordinary gift of vivid de- 
scription and a tactful art of selection to make 
95 



96 At Large 

the reflections of one's travels interesting to 
other people. It is a great misfortune for 
biographers that there are abundance of peo- 
ple who are stirred, partly by unwonted lei- 
sure and partly by awakened interest, to keep 
a diary only when they are abroad. These 
extracts from diaries of foreign travel, which 
generally pour their muddy stream into a bio- 
graphy on the threshold of the hero's manhood, 
are things to be resolutely skipped. What one 
desires in a biography is to see the ordinary 
texture of a man's life, an account of his 
working days, his normal hours; and to most 
people the normal current of their lives ap- 
pears so commonplace and uninteresting that 
they keep no record of it, while they often 
keep an elaborate record of their impressions 
of foreign travel, which are generally super- 
ficial and picturesque, and remarkably like the 
impressions of all other intelligent people. A 
friend of mine returned the other day from 
an American tour, and told me that he re- 
ceived a severe rebuke, out of the mouth of a 
babe, which cured him of expatiating on his 
experiences. He lunched with his brother 
soon after his return, and was holding forth 



Travel 97 

with a consciousness of brilliant descriptive 
emphasis, when his eldest nephew, aged eight, 
towards the end of the meal, laid down his 
spoon and fork, and said piteously to his 
mother, " Mummy, I must talk ; it does make 
me so tired to hear Uncle going on like that." 
A still more effective rebuke was administered 
by a clever lady of my acquaintance to a 
cousin of hers, a young lady who had just re- 
turned from India, and was very full of her 
experiences. The cousin had devoted herself 
during breakfast to giving a lively description 
of social life in India, and was preparing to 
spend the morning in continuing her lecture, 
when the elder lady slipped out of the room, 
and returned with some sermon-paper, a blot- 
ting-book, and a pen. " Maud," she said, 
" this is too good to be lost : you must write 
it all down, every word ! " The projected 
manuscript did not come to very much, but 
the lesson was not thrown away. 

Perhaps, for most people, the best results 
of travel are that they return with a sense of 
grateful security to the familiar scene: the 
monotonous current of life has been enlivened, 
the old relationships have gained a new value, 



gS At Large 

the old gossip is taken up with a comfortable 
zest; the old rooms are the best, after all, the 
homely language is better than the outlandish 
tongue; it is a comfort to have done with 
squeezing the sponge and cramming the trunk : 
it is good to be at home. 

But to people of more cultivated and intel- 
lectual tastes there is an abundance of good 
reasons for the pursuit of impressions. It is 
worth a little fatigue to see the spring sun 
lie softly upon the unfamiliar foliage, to see 
the delicate tints of the purple-flowered Judas- 
tree, the bright colours of Southern houses, 
the old high-shouldered chateau blinking 
among its wooded parterres; it is pleasant to 
see mysterious rites conducted at tabernacled 
altars, under dark arches, and to smell the 
" thick, strong, stupefying incense-smoke " ; to 
see well-known pictures in their native setting, 
to hear the warm waves of the canal lapping 
on palace-stairs, with the exquisite moulded 
cornice overhead. It gives one a strange 
thrill to stand in places rich with dim asso- 
ciations, to stand by the tombs of heroes and 
saints, to see the scenes made familiar by art 
or history, the homes of famous men. Such 



.*-''^i 



Travel 99 

travel is full of weariness and disappointment. 
The place one had desired half a lifetime to 
behold turns out to be much like other places, 
devoid of inspiration. A tiresome companion 
casts dreariness as from an inky cloud upon 
the mind. Do I not remember visiting the 
Palatine with a friend bursting with archaeo- 
logical information, who led us from room to 
room, and identified all by means of a folding 
plan, to find at the conclusion that he had 
begun at the wrong end, and that even the cen- 
tral room was not identified correctly, because 
the number of rooms was even, and not odd? 
But, for all that, there come blessed un- 
utterable moments, when the mood and the 
scene and the companion are all attuned in a 
soft harmony. Such moments come back to 
me as I write. I see the mouldering brick- 
work of a crumbling tomb all overgrown with 
grasses and snapdragons, far out in the Cam- 
pagna; or feel the plunge of the boat through 
the reed-beds of the Anapo, as we slid into the 
silent pool of blue water in the heart of the 
marsh, where the sand danced at the bottom^ 
and the springs bubbled up, while a great bit- 
tern flew booming away from a reedy pool hard 



ioo At Large 

by. Such things are worth paying a heavy 
price for, because they bring a sort of aerial 
distance into the mind, they touch the spirit 
with a hope that the desire for beauty and 
perfection is not, after all, wholly unrealis- 
able, but that there is a sort of treasure to be 
found even upon earth, if one diligently goes 
in search of it. 

Of one thing, however, I am quite certain, 
and that is that travel should not be a fever- 
ish garnering of impressions, but a delicious 
and leisurely plunge into a different atmos- 
phere. It is better to visit few places, and to 
become at home in each, than to race from 
place to place, guide-book in hand. A beau- 
tiful scene does not yield up its secrets to the 
eye of the collector. What one wants is not 
definite impressions but indefinite influences. 
It is of little use to enter a church, unless one 
tries to worship there, because the essence of 
the place is worship, and only through worship 
can the secret of the shrine be apprehended. 
It is of little use to survey a landscape, 
unless one has an overpowering desire to 
spend the remainder of one's days there; 
because it is the life of the place, and not the 



Travel loi 

sight of it, in which one desires to have a 
part. Above all, one must not let one's memo- 
ries sleep as in a dusty lumber-room of the 
mind. In a quiet firelit hour one must draw 
near and scrutinise them afresh, and ask one- 
self what remains. As I write, I open the door 
of my treasury and look round. What comes 
up before me? I see an opalescent sky, and 
the great soft blue rollers of a sapphire sea. 
I am journeying, it seems, in no mortal boat, 
though it was a commonplace vessel enough 
at the time, twenty years ago, and singularly 
destitute of bodily provision. What is that 
over the sea's rim, where the tremulous, shift- 
ing, blue line of billows shimmers and fluctu- 
ates? A long, low promontory, and in the 
centre, over white clustered houses and masts 
of shipping, rises a white dome like the shrine 
of some celestial city. That is Cadiz for me. 
1 dare say the picture is all wrong, and I shall 
be told that Cadiz has a tower and is full 
of factory-chimneys; but for me the dome, 
ghostly white, rises as though moulded out of 
a single pearl, upon the shifting edges of the 
haze. Whatever I have seen in my life, that 
at least is immortal. 



I02 At Large 

Or again the scene shifts, and now I stumble 
to the deck of another little steamer, very in- 
sufficiently habited in the sharp freshness of 
the dawn of a spring morning. The waves are 
different here — not the great steely, league- 
long rollers of the Atlantic, but the sharp 
azure waves, marching in rhythmic order, of 
the Mediterranean; what is the land, with 
grassy downs and folded valleys falling to 
grey cliffs, upon which the brisk waves whiten 
and leap? That is Sicily; and the thought 
of Theocritus, with the shepherd-boy singing 
light-heartedly upon the headland a song of 
sweet days and little eager joys, comes into 
my heart like wine, and brings a sharp touch 
of tears into the eyes. Theocritus ! How little 
I thought, as I read the ugly brown volume 
with its yellow paper, in the dusty school- 
room at Eton ten years before, that it was go- 
ing to mean that to me, sweetly as even then, in 
a moment torn from the noisy tide of schoolboy 
life, came the pretty echoes of the song into 
a little fanciful and restless mind! But now, 
as I see those deserted limestone crags, that 
endless sheep-wold, with no sign of a habita- 
tion, rising and falling far into the distance, 



Travel 103 

with the fresh sea-breeze upon my cheek — there 
comes upon me that tender sorrow for all the 
beautiful days that are dead, the days when 
the shepherds walked together, exulting in 
youth and warmth and good-fellowship and 
song, to the village festival, and met the wan- 
dering minstrel, with his coat of skin and his 
kind, ironical smile, who gave them, after their 
halting lays, a touch of the old true melody 
from a master's hand. What do all those old 
and sweet dreams mean for me, the sunlight 
that breaks on the stream of human souls, 
flowing all together, alike through dark rocks 
where the water chafes and thunders, and 
spreading out into tranquil shining reaches, 
where the herons stand half -asleep? What 
does that strange drift of kindred spirits, 
moving from the unknown to the unknown, 
mean for me? I only know that It brings 
into my mind a strange yearning, and a de- 
sire of almost unearthly sweetness for all that 
is delicate and beautiful and full of charm, 
together with a sombre pity for the falling 
mist of tears, the hard discipline of the world, 
the cries of anguish, as life lapses from the 
steep into the silent tide of death. 



I04 At Large 

Or, again, I seem once more to sit in the 
balcony of a house that looks out toward 
Vesuvius. It is late; the sky is clouded, the 
air is still; a grateful coolness comes up from 
acre after acre of gardens climbing the steep 
slope; a fluttering breeze, that seems to have 
lost his way in the dusk, comes timidly and 
whimsically past, like Ariel, singing as soft 
as a far-off falling sea in the great pine over- 
head, making a little sudden flutter in the 
dry leaves of the thick creeper; like Ariel 
comes that dainty spirit of the air, laden with 
balmy scents and cool dew. A few lights 
twinkle in the plain below. Opposite the sky 
has an added blackness, an impenetrability of 
shade ; but what is the strange red eye of light 
that hangs between earth and heaven? And, 
stranger still, what is that phantasmal gleam 
of a lip of crags high in the air, and that mys- 
terious, moving, shifting light, like a pale 
flame, above it? The gloomy spot is a rent 
in the side of Vesuvius where the smouldering 
heat has burnt through the crust, and where 
a day or two before I saw a viscid stream of 
molten liquor, with the flames playing over 
it, creeping, creeping through the tunnelled 



Travel 105 

ashes; and in the light above is the lip of Ve- 
suvius itself, with its restless furnace at work, 
casting up a billowy swell of white oily smoke, 
while the glare of the fiery pit lights up the 
under-side of the rising vapours. A ghastly 
manifestation, that, of sleepless and stern 
forces, ever at work upon some eternal and be- 
wildering task; and yet so strangely made am 
I, that these fierce signal-fires, seen afar, but 
blend with the scents of the musky alleys for 
me into a thrill of unutterable wonder. 

There are hundreds of such pictures stored 
in my mind, each stamped upon some sensitive 
particle of the brain, that cannot be obliter- 
ated, and each of which the mind can recall 
at will. And that, too, is a fact of surpass- 
ing wonder: what is the delicate instrument 
that registers, with no seeming volition, these 
amazing pictures, and preserves them thus 
with so fantastic a care, retouching them, 
fashioning them anew, detaching from the 
picture every sordid detail, till each is as a 
lyric, inexpressible, exquisite, too fine for 
words to touch? 

Now it is useless to dictate to others the 
aims and methods of travel : each must follow 



io6 At Large 

his own taste. To myself the acquisition of 
knowledge and information is in these mat- 
ters an entirely negligible thing. To me the 
one and supreme object is the gathering of a 
gallery of pictures; and yet that is not a 
definite object either, for the whimsical and 
stubborn spirit refuses to be bound by any 
regulations in the matter. It will garner up 
with the most poignant care a single vignette, 
a tiny detail. I see, as I write, the vision of 
a great golden-grey carp swimming lazily in 
the clear pool of Arethusa, the carpet of 
mesembryanthemum that, for some fancy of 
its own, chose to involve the whole of a rail- 
way viaduct with its flaunting magenta flow- 
ers and its fleshy leaves. I see the edge of the 
sea, near Syracuse, rimmed with a line of the 
intensest yellow, and I hear the voice of a 
guide explaining that it was caused by the 
breaking up of a stranded orange-boat, so that 
the waves for many hundred yards threw up 
on the beach a wrack of fruit; yet the same 
wilful and perverse mind will stand impene- 
trably dumb and blind before the noblest 
and sweetest prospect, and decline to 
receive any impression at all. What is per- 



Travel 107 

haps the oddest characteristic of the tricksy 
spirit is that it often chooses moments of in- 
tense discomfort and fatigue to master some 
scene, and take its indelible picture. I sup- 
pose that the reason of this is that the mind 
makes, at such moments, a vigorous effort to 
protest against the tyranny of the vile body, 
and to distract itself from instant cares. 

But another man may travel for archaeo- 
logical or even statistical reasons. He may 
wish, like Ulysses, to study " manners, coun- 
cils, customs, governments." He may be pre- 
occupied with questions of architectural style 
or periods of sculpture. I have a friend who 
takes up at intervals the study of the pictures 
of a particular master, and will take endless 
trouble and undergo incredible discomfort in 
order to see the vilest daubs, if only he can 
make his list complete, and say that he has 
seen all the reputed works of the master. 
This instinct is, I believe, nothing but the sur- 
vival of the childish instinct for collecting, 
and, though I can reluctantly admire any man 
who spares no trouble to gain an end, the mo- 
tive is dark and unintelligible to me. 

There are some travellers, like Dean Stan- 



io8 At Large 

ley, who drift from the appreciation of natural 
scenery into the pursuit of historical associa- 
tions. The story of Stanley as a boy, when 
he had his first sight of the snowy Alps on 
the horizon, always delights me. He danced 
about saying, " Oh, what shall I do, what shall 
I do?" But in later days Stanley would not 
go a mile to see a view, while he would travel 
all night to see a few stones of a ruin, jutting 
out of a farmyard wall, if only there was some 
human and historical tradition connected 
with the place. I do not myself understand 
that. I should not wish to see Etna merely 
because Empedocles is supposed to have 
jumped down the crater, nor the site of Jeri- 
cho because the walls fell down at the 
trumpets of the host. The only interest to 
me in an historical scene is that it should be 
in such a condition as that one can to a cer- 
tain extent reconstruct the original drama, 
and be sure that one's eyes rest upon very 
much the same scene as the actors saw. The 
reason why Syracuse moved me by its ac- 
quired beauty, and not for its historical asso- 
ciations, was because I felt convinced that 
Thucydides, who gives so picturesque a de- 



Travel 109 

scription of the sea-fight, can never have set 
eyes on the place, and must have embroidered 
his account from scanty hearsay. But, on the 
other hand, there are few things in the world 
more profoundly moving than to see a place 
where great thoughts have been conceived and 
great books written, when one is able to feel 
that the scene is hardly changed. The other 
day, as I passed before the sacred gate of 
Bydal Mount, I took my hat off my head with 
a sense of indescribable reverence. My com- 
panion asked me laughingly why I did so. 
" Why ? " I said ; " from natural piety of 
course! I know every detail here as well as 
if I had lived here, and I have walked in 
thought a hundred times with the poet, to and 
fro in the laurelled walks of the garden, up 
the green shoulder of Nab Scar, and sat in the 
little parlour, while the fire leapt on the 
hearth, and heard him ^ booing ' his verses, 
to be copied by some friendly hand." 

I thrill to see the stately rooms of Abbots- 
ford, with all their sham feudal decorations, 
the little staircase by which Scott stole away 
to his solitary work, the folded clothes, the 
shapeless hat, the ugly shoes, laid away in the 



no At Large 

glass case; the plantations where he walked 
with his shrewd bailiff, the place where he 
stopped so often on the shoulder of the slope, 
to look at the Eildon Hills, the rooms where 
he sat, a broken and bereaved man, yet with so 
gallant a spirit, to wrestle with sorrow and 
adversity. I wept, I am not ashamed to say, 
at Abbotsford, at the sight of the stately 
Tweed rolling his silvery flood past lawns and 
shrubberies, to think of that kindly, brave, and 
honourable heart, and his passionate love of 
all the goodly and cheerful joys of life and 
earth. 

Or, again, it was a solemn day for me to 
pass from the humble tenement where Cole- 
ridge lived, at Nether Stowey, before the cloud 
of sad habit had darkened his horizon, and 
turned him away from the wells of poetry 
into the deserts of metaphysical specula- 
tion, to find, if he could, some medicine for 
his tortured spirit. I walked with a holy awe 
along the leafy lanes to Alfoxden, where the 
beautiful house nestles in the green combe 
among its oaks, thinking how here, and here, 
Wordsworth and Coleridge had walked to- 
gether in the glad days of youth, and planned, 



Travel 1 1 1 

in obscurity and secluded joy, the fresh and 
lovely lyrics of their matin-prime. 

I turn, I confess, more eagerly to scenes like 
these than to scenes of historical and political 
tradition, because there hangs for me a glory 
about the scene of the conception and genesis 
of beautiful imaginative work that is unlike 
any glory that the earth holds. The natural 
joy of the youthful spirit receiving the im- 
pact of mighty thoughts, of poignant impres- 
sions, has for me a liberty and a grace which 
no historical or political associations could 
ever possess. I could not glow to see the room 
in which a statesman worked out the details 
of a bill for the extension of the franchise, or 
a modification of the duties upon imports and 
exports, though I respect the growing powers 
of democracy and the extinction of privilege 
and monopoly ; but these measures are dimmed 
and tainted with intrigue and manoeuvre and 
statecraft. I do not deny their importance, 
their worth, their nobleness. But not by 
committees and legislation does humanity 
triumph. In the vanguard go the blessed ad- 
venturous spirits that quicken the moral tem- 
perature, and uplift the banner of simplicity 



112 At Large 

and sincerity. The host marches heavily be- 
hind, and the commissariat rolls grumbling in 
the rear of all; and though my place may be 
with the workaday herd, I will send my 
fancy afar among the leafy valleys and the 
far-off hills of hope. 

But I would not here quarrel with the taste 
of any man. If a mortal chooses to travel in 
search of comfortable rooms, new cookery and 
wines, the livelier gossip of unknown people, 
in heaven's name let him do so. If another 
wishes to study economic conditions, stand- 
ards of life, rates of wages, he has my gracious 
leave for his pilgrimage. If another desires 
to amass historical and archaeological facts, 
measurements of hypaethral temples, modes of 
burial, folk-lore, fortification, God forbid that 
I should throw cold water on the quest. But 
the only traveller whom I recognise as a 
kindred spirit is the man who goes in search 
of impressions and effects, of tone and at- 
mosphere, of rare and curious beauty, of up- 
lifting association. Nothing that has ever 
moved the interest, or the anxiety, or the care, 
or the wonder, of human beings can ever 
wholly lose its charm. I have felt my skin 



Travel 113 

prickle and creep at the sight of that amazing 
thing in the Dublin museum, a section dug 
bodily out of a claypit, and showing the rough- 
hewn stones of a cist, deep in the earth, the 
gravel over it and around it, the roots of the 
withered grass forming a crust many feet 
above, and inside the cist the rude urn, re- 
versed over a heap of charred ashes; it was 
not the curiosity of the sight that moved me, 
but the thought of the old dark life revealed, 
the dim and savage world, that was yet shot 
through and pierced, even as now, with sor- 
row for death, and care for the beloved ashes 
of a friend and chieftain. Such a sight sets 
a viewless net-work of emotion, which seems 
to interlace far back into the ages, all pulsat- 
ing and stirring. One sees in a flash that hu- 
manity lived, carelessly and brutally perhaps, 
as we too live, and were confronted, as we 
are confronted, with the horror of the gap, 
the intolerable mystery of life lapsing into 
the dark. Ah, the relentless record, the im- 
penetrable mystery! I care very little, I fear, 
for the historical development of funereal 
rites, and hardly more for the light that such 
things throw on the evolution of society. I 



114 At Large 

leave that gratefully enough to the philoso- 
phers. What I care for is the touch of nature 
that shows me my ancient brethren of the 
dim past — who would have mocked and ridi- 
culed me, I doubt not, if I had fallen into their 
hands, and killed me as carelessly as one 
throws aside the rind of a squeezed fruit — 
yet I am one with them, and perhaps even 
something of their blood flows in my veins 
yet. 

As I grow older, I tend to travel less and 
less, and I do not care if I never cross the 
Channel again. Is there a right and a wrong 
in the matter, an advisability or an inad- 
visability, an expediency or an inexpediency? 
I do not think so. Travelling is a pleasure, if 
it is anything, and a pleasure pursued from a 
sense of duty is a very fatuous thing. I have 
no good reason to give, only an accumulation 
of small reasons. Dr. Johnson once said that 
any number of insufficient reasons did not 
make a sufficient one, just as a number of rab- 
bits did not make a horse. A lively but 
misleading illustration : he might as well have 
said that any number of sovereigns did not 
make a cheque for a hundred pounds. I sup- 



Travel 1 1 5 

pose that I do not like the trouble to start 
with ; and then I do not like being adrift from 
my own beloved country. Then I cannot con- 
verse in any foreign language, and half the 
pleasure of travelling comes from being able 
to lay oneself alongside of a new point of 
view. Then, too, I realise, as I grow older, 
how little I have really seen of my own in- 
comparably beautiful and delightful land, so 
that, like the hero of Newman's hymn, 

I do not ask to see 
The distant scene; one step enough for me. 

And, lastly, I have a reason which will per- 
haps seem a far-fetched one. Travel is essen- 
tially a distraction, and I do not want to be 
distracted any more. One of the mistakes that 
people make, in these Western latitudes, is to 
be possessed by an inordinate desire to drown 
thought. The aim of many men whom I know 
seems to me to be occupied in some absolutely 
definite way, so that they may be as far as 
possible unaware of their own existence. 
Anything to avoid reflection! A normal Eng- 
lishman does not care very much what the 



ii6 At Large 

work and value of his occupation is, as long as 
he is occupied; and I am not at all sure that 
we came into the world to be occupied. Christ, 
in the Gospel story, rebuked the busy Martha 
for her bustling anxieties, her elaborate atten- 
tions to her guests, and praised the leisurely 
^lary for desiring to sit and hear Him talk. 
Socrates spent his life in conversation. I do 
not say that contemplation is a duty, but I 
cannot help thinking that we are not forbid- 
den to scrutinise life, to wonder what it is all 
about, to study its problems, to apprehend its 
beauty and significance. We admire a man 
who goes on making money long after he has 
made far more than he needs; we think a life 
honourably spent in editing Greek books. 
Socrates in one of Plato's dialogues quotes 
the opinion of a philosopher to the effect that 
when a man has made enough to live upon he 
should begin to practise virtue. " I think he 
should begin even earlier," says the inter- 
locutor; and I am wholly in agreement with 
him. Travel is one of the expedients to which 
busy men resort in order that they may forget 
their existence. I do not venture to think this 
exactly culpable, but I feel sure that it is a 



Travel 117 

pity that people do not do less and think 
more. If a man asks what good comes from 
thinking, I can only retort by asking what 
good comes from the multiplication of un- 
necessary activity. I am quite as much at a 
loss as any one else to say what is the object 
of life, but I do not feel any doubt that we are 
not sent into the world to be in a fuss. Like 
the lobster in the Water-Babies, I cry, " Let 
me alone ; I want to think ! " because I believe 
that that occupation is at least as profitable 
as many others. 

And then, too, without travelling more than 
a few miles from my door, I can see things 
fully as enchanting as I can see by ranging 
Europe. I went to-day along a well-known 
road ; just where the descent begins to fall into 
a quiet valley there stands a windmill — not 
one of the ugly black circular towers that one 
sometimes sees, but one of the old crazy 
boarded sort, standing on a kind of stalk; out 
of the little loop-holes of the mill the flour had 
dusted itself prettily over the weather-board- 
ing. From a mysterious hatch half-way up 
leaned the miller, drawing up a sack of grain 
with a little pulley. There is nothing so en- 



ii8 At Large 

chanting as to see a man leaning out of a dark 
doorway high up in the air. He drew the sack 
in, he closed the panel. The sails whirled, 
flapping and creaking, and I loved to think 
of him in the dusty gloom, with the gear 
grumbling among the rafters, tipping the 
golden grain into its funnel, while the rattling 
hopper below poured out its soft stream of 
flour. Beyond the mill, the ground sank to 
a valley; the roofs clustered round a great 
church tower, the belfry windows blinking 
solemnly. Hard by the ancient Hall peeped 
out from its avenue of elms. That was a pic- 
ture as sweet as anything I have ever seen 
abroad, as perfect a piece of art as could be 
framed, and more perfect than anything that 
could be painted^ because it was a piece out 
of the old kindly, quiet life of the world. One 
ought to learn, as the years flow on, to love 
such scenes as that, and not to need to have 
the blood and the brain stirred by romantic 
prospects, peaked hills, well-furnished gal- 
leries, magnificent buildings: mutare animum, 
that is the secret, to grow more hopeful, more 
alive to delicate beauties, more tender, less ex- 
acting. Nothing, it is true, can give us peace; 



Travel 119 

but we get nearer it by loving the familiar 
scene, the old homestead, the tiny valley, the 
wayside copse, than we do by racing over 
Europe on track of Giorgione, or over Asia in 
pursuit of local colour. After all, everything 
has its appointed time. It is good to range 
in youth, to rub elbows with humanity, and 
then, as the days go on, to take stock, to re- 
member, to wonder, " to be content with lit- 
tle, to serve beauty well." 



VI 



Specialism 

IT is a very curious thing to reflect how often 
an old platitude or axiom retains its vi- 
tality, long after the conditions which gave it 
birth have altered, and it no longer represents 
a truth. It would not matter if such plati- 
tudes only lived on dustily in vapid and ill- 
furnished minds, like the vases of milky-green 
opaque glass decorated with golden stars, 
that were the joy of Early Victorian chimney- 
pieces, and now hold spills in the second-best 
spare bedroom. But like the psalmist's ene- 
mies, platitudes live and are mighty. They 
remain, and, alas ! they have the force of argu- 
ments in the minds of sturdy unreflective 
men, who describe themselves as plain, 
straightforward people, and whose opinions 
carry weight in a community whose feelings 
are swayed by the statements of successful 



Specialism 121 

men rather than by the conclusions of reason- 
able men. 

One of these pernicious platitudes is the 
statement that every one ought to know some- 
thing about everything and everything about 
something. It has a speciously epigrammatic 
air about it, dazzling enough to i)ersuade the 
common-sense person that it is an intellectual 
judgment. 

As a matter of fact, under present condi- 
tions, it represents an impossible and even 
undesirable ideal. A man who tried to know 
something abo.ut everything would end in 
knowing very little about anything; and the 
most exhaustive programme that could be laid 
down for the most erudite of savants nowa- 
days would be that he should know anything 
about anything, while the most resolute of 
specialists must be content with knowing 
something about something. 

A well-informed friend told me, the other 
day, the name and date of a man who, he 
said, could be described as the last person who 
knew practically everything at his date that 
was worth knowing. I have forgotten both 
the name and the date and the friend who told 



122 At Large 

me, but I believe that the learned man in ques- 
tion was a cardinal in the sixteenth centur}^ 
At the present time, the problem of the ac- 
cumulation of knowledge and the multiplica- 
tion of books is a very serious one indeed. It 
is, however, morbid to allow it to trouble the 
mind. Like all insoluble problems, it will settle 
itself in a way so obvious that the people who 
solve it will wonder that any one could ever 
have doubted what the solution would be, just 
as the problem of the depletion of the world's 
stock of coal will no doubt be solved in some 
perfectly simple fashion. 

The dictum in question is generally quoted 
as an educational formula in favour of giving 
every one what is called a sound general edu- 
cation. And it is probably one of the contribu- 
tory causes which account for the present 
chaos of curricula. All subjects are held to 
be so important, and each subject is thought 
by its professors to be so peculiarly adapted 
for educational stimulus, that a resolute selec- 
tion of subjects, which is the only remedy, is 
not attempted; and accordingly the victim 
of educational theories is in the predica- 
ment of the man described by Dr. Johnson 



specialism 123 

who could not make up his mind which leg 
of his breeches he would put his foot into 
first. Meanwhile, said the Doctor, with 
a directness of speech which requires to 
be palliated, the process of investiture is 
suspended. 

But the practical result of the dilemma is 
the rise of specialism. The savant is dead and 
the specialist rules. It is interesting to try to 
trace the effect of this revolution upon our 
national culture. 

Now, I have no desire whatever to take up 
the cudgels against the specialists: they are a 
harmless and necessary race, so long as they 
are aware of their limitations. But the 
tyranny of an oligarchy is the worst kind of 
tyranny, because it means the triumph of an 
average over individuals, whereas the worst 
that can be said of a despotism is that it is 
the triumph of an individual over an average. 
The tyranny of the specialistic oligarchy is 
making itself felt to-day, and I should like to 
fortify the revolutionary spirit of liberty, 
Avhose boast it is to detest tyranny in all its 
forms, whether it is the tyranny of an enlight- 
ened despot, or the tyranny of a virtuous 



124 At Large 



oligarchy, or the tyranny of an intelligent 
democracy. 

The first evil which results from the rule 
of the specialist is the destruction of the 
amateur. So real a fact is the tyranny of the 
specialist that the very word " amateur," 
which means a leisurely lover of fine things, 
is beginning to be distorted into meaning an 
inefficient performer. As an instance of its 
correct and idiomatic use I often think of the 
delightful landlord whom Stevenson encoun- 
tered somewhere, and upon whom he pressed 
some Burgundy which he had with him. The 
generous host courteously refused a second 
glass, saying, " You see I am an amateur of 
these things, and I am capable of leaving you 
not sufficient." Now, I shall concern myself 
here principally with literature, because, in 
England at all events, literature plays the 
largest part in general culture. It may be 
said that we owe some of the best literature 
we have to amateurs. To contrast a few 
names, taken at random, Shakespeare, Dry- 
den, Pope, Dr. Johnson, De Quincey, Tenny- 
son, and Carlyle were professionals, it is true; 
but, on the other hand, Milton, Gray, Boswell, 



Specialism 125 

Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Shelley, Brown- 
ing, and Ruskin were amateurs. It is not a 
question of how much a man writes or pub- 
lishes, it is a question of the spirit in which 
a man writes. Walter Scott became a pro- 
fessional in the last years of his life, and for 
the noblest of reasons; but he also became a 
bad writer. A good pair to contrast are 
Southey and Coleridge. They began as ama- 
teurs. Southey became a professional writer, 
and his sun set in the mists of valuable in- 
formation. Coleridge, as an amateur, en- 
riched the language with a few priceless 
poems, and then got involved in the morass of 
dialectical metaphysics. The point is whether 
a man writes simply because he cannot help 
it, or whether he writes to make an income. 
The latter motive does not by any means pre- 
vent his doing first-rate artistic work — indeed, 
there are certain persons who seem to have re- 
quired the stimulus of necessity to make them 
break through an initial indolence of nature. 
When Johnson found fault with Gray for 
having times of the year when he wrote more 
easily, from the vernal to the autumnal 
equinox, he added that a man could write at 



126 At Large 

any time if he set himself doggedly to it. 
True, no doubt! But to write doggedly is not 
to court favourable conditions for artistic 
work. It may be a finer sight for a moralist 
to see a man performing an appointed task 
heavily and faithfully, with grim tenacity, 
than it is to see an artist in a frenzy of de- 
light dashing down an overpowering impres- 
sion of beauty ; but what has always hampered 
the British appreciation of literature is that 
we cannot disentangle the moral element from 
it: we are interested in morals, not in art, 
and we require a dash of optimistic piety in 
all writing that we propose to enjoy. 

The real question is whether, if a man sets 
himself doggedly to work, the appetite comes 
with eating, and whether the caged bird be- 
gins to flutter its wings, and to send out the 
song that it learnt in the green heart of the 
wood. When Byron said that easy writing 
made d — d hard reading, he meant that care- 
less conception and hasty workmanship tend 
to blur the pattern and the colour of work. 
The fault of the amateur is that he can make 
the coat, but cannot be bothered to make it fit. 
But it is not by any means true that hard 



Specialism 127 

writing makes easy reading. The spirit of 
the amateur is the spirit of the lover, who 
trembles at the thought that the delicate crea- 
ture he loves may learn to love him in return, 
if he can but praise her worthily. The pro- 
fessional spirit is the spirit in which a man 
carefully and courteously wooes an elderly 
spinster for the sake of her comfortable for- 
tune. The amateur has an irresponsible joy 
in his work; he is like the golfer who dreams 
of mighty drives, and practices " putting " on 
his back lawn: the professional writer gives 
his solid hours to his work in a conscientious 
spirit, and is glad in hours of freedom to put 
the tiresome business away. Yet neither the 
amateur nor the professional can hope 
to capture the spirit of art by joy or faith- 
fulness. It is a kind of divine felicity, when 
all is said and done, the kindly gift of 
God. 

Now into this free wild world of art and 
literature and music comes the specialist and 
pegs out his claim, fencing out the amateur, 
who is essentially a rambler, from a hundred 
eligible situations. In literature this is par- 
ticularly the case: the amateur is told by the 



128 At Large 

historian that he must not intrude upon his- 
tory; that history is a science, and not a 
province of literature; that the time has not 
come to draw any conclusions or to summa- 
rise any tendencies ; that picturesque narrative 
is an offence against the spirit of Truth; that 
no one is as black or as white as he is painted ; 
and that to trifle with history is to commit a 
sin compounded of the sins of Ananias and 
Simon Magus, The amateur runs off, his 
hands over his ears, and henceforth hardly 
dares even to read history, to say nothing of 
writing it. Perhaps I draw too harsh a pic- 
ture, but the truth is that I did, as a very 
young man, with no training except that pro- 
vided by a sketchy knowledge of the classics, 
once attempt to write an historical biography. 
I shudder to think of my method and equip- 
ment; I skipped the dull parts, I left all 
tiresome documents unread. It was a sad far- 
rago of enthusiasm and levity and heady writ- 
ing. But Jove's thunder rolled and the bolt 
fell. A just man, whom I have never quite 
forgiven, to tell the truth, told me with un- 
necessary rigour and acrimony that I had 
made a pitiable exhibition of myself. But I 



Specialism 129 

have thanked God ever since, for I turned to 
literature pure and simple. 

Then, too, it is the same with art-criticism; 
here the amateur again, who, poor fool, is on 
the look-out for what is beautiful, is told that 
he must not meddle with art unless he does it 
seriously, which means that he must devote 
himself mainly to the study of inferior master- 
pieces, and schools, and tendencies. In litera- 
ture it is the same : he must not devote himself 
to reading and loving great books, he must 
disentangle influences; he must discern the 
historical importance of writers, worthless in 
themselves, who form important links. In 
theology and in philosophy it is much the 
same: he must not read the Bible and say 
what he feels about it; he must unravel Rab- 
binical and Talmudic tendencies; he must ac- 
quaint himself with the heretical leanings of 
a certain era, and the shadow cast upon the 
page by apocryphal tradition. In philosophy 
he is still worse off, because he must plumb the 
depths of metaphysical jargon and master the 
criticism of methods. 

Now, this is in a degree both right and neces- 
sary, because the blind must not attempt to 
9 



130 At Large 

lead the blind; but it is treating the whole 
thing in too strictly scientific a spirit for all 
that. The misery of it is that the work of the 
specialist in all these regions tends to set a 
hedge about the law ; it tends to accumulate and 
perpetuate a vast amount of inferior work. 
The result of it is in literature, for instance, 
that an immense amount of second-rate and 
third-rate books go on being reprinted; and 
instead of the principle of selection be- 
ing applied to great authors, and their 
inferior writings being allowed to lapse into 
oblivion, they go on being reissued, not be- 
cause they have any direct value for the hu- 
man spirit, but because they have a scientific 
importance from the point of view of develop- 
ment. Yet for the ordinary human being it is 
far more important that he should read great 
masterpieces in a spirit of lively and enthusi- 
astic sympathy than that he should wade into 
them through a mass of archaeological and 
philological detail. As a boy I used to have 
to prepare, on occasions, a play of Shakespeare 
for a holiday task. I have regarded certain 
plays with a kind of horror ever since, because 
one ended by learning up the introduction, 



Specialism 131 

which concerned itself with the origin of the 
play, and the notes which illustrated the mean- 
ing of such words as " kerns and gallow- 
glasses/' and left the action and the poetry 
and the emotion of the play to take care of 
themselves. This was flue partly to the 
blighting influence of examination-papers set 
by men of sterile, conscientious brains, but 
partly to the terrible value set by British 
minds upon correct information. The truth 
really is that if one begins by caring for a work 
of art, one also cares to understand the me- 
dium through which it is conveyed; but if one 
begins by studying the medium first, one is 
apt to end by loathing the masterpiece, be- 
cause of the dusty apparatus that it seems 
liable to collect about itself. 

The result of the influence of the specialist 
upon literature is that the amateur, hustled 
from any region where the historical and scien- 
tific method can be applied, turns his atten- 
tion to the field of pure imagination, where he 
cannot be interfered with. And this, I believe, 
is one of the reasons why helles lettres in the 
more precise sense tend to be deserted in fa- 
vour of fiction. Sympathetic and imaginative 



132 At Large 

criticism is so apt to be stamped upon by the 
erudite, who cry out so lamentably over errors 
and minute slips, that the novel seems to be 
the only safe vantage-ground in which the 
amateur may disport himself. 

But if the specialist is to the amateur what 
the hawk is to the dove, let us go further, and 
in a spirit of love, like Mr. Chadband, inquire 
what is the effect of specialism on the mind of 
the specialist. I have had the opportunity of 
meeting many specialists, and I say unhesitat- 
ingly that the effect largely depends upon the 
natural temperament of the individual. As a 
general rule, the great specialist is a wise, 
kindly, humble, delightful man. He perceives 
that though he has spent his whole life upon 
a subject or a fraction of a subject, he knows 
hardly anything about it compared to what 
there is to know. The track of knowledge 
glimmers far ahead of him, rising and falling 
like a road over solitary downs. He knows 
that it will not be given to him to advance very 
far upon the path, and he half envies those 
who shall come after, to whom many things 
that are dark mysteries to himself will be clear 
and plain. But he sees, too, how the dim 



Specialism 133 

avenues of knowledge reach out in every direc- 
tion, interlacing and combining, and when he 
contrasts the tiny powers of the most subtle 
brain with all the wide range of law — for the 
knowledge which is to be, not invented, but 
simply discovered, is all assuredly there, 
secret and complex as it seems — there is but 
little room for complacency or pride. In- 
deed, I think that a great savant, as a rule, 
feels that instead of being separated by his 
store of knowledge, as by a wide space that he 
has crossed, from smaller minds, he is brought 
closer to the ignorant by the presence of the 
vast unknown. Instead of feeling that he has 
soared like a rocket away from the ground, he 
thinks of himself rather as a flower might think 
whose head was an inch or two higher than a 
great company of similar flowers; he has per- 
haps a wider view; he sees the bounding 
hedgerow, the distant line of hills, whereas the 
humbler flower sees little but a forest of stems 
and blooms, with the light falling dimly be- 
tween. And a great savant, too, is far more 
ready to credit other people with a wider 
knowledge than they possess. It is the lesser 
kind of savant, the man of one book, of one 



134 At Large 

province, of one period, who is inclined to 
think that he is differentiated from the crowd. 
The great man is far too much preoccupied 
with real progress to waste time and energy 
in showing up the mistakes of others. It is 
the lesser kind of savant^ jealous of his own 
reputation, anxious to show his superiority, 
who loves to censure and deride the feebler 
brother. If one ever sees a relentless and 
pitiless review of a book — an exposure, as it is 
called, by one specialist of another's work — 
one may be fairly certain that the critic is a 
minute kind of person. Again, the great 
specialist is never anxious to obtrude his sub- 
ject; he is rather anxious to hear what is 
going on in other regions of mental activity, 
regions which he would like to explore but 
cannot. It is the lesser light that desires to 
dazzle and bewilder his company, to tyran- 
nise, to show off. It is the most difficult thing 
to get a great savant to talk about his sub- 
ject, though, if he is kind and patient, will an- 
swer unintelligent questions, and help a feeble 
mind along, it is one of the most delightful 
things in the world. I seized the opportu- 
nity some little while ago, on finding myself 



Specialism 135 

sitting next to a great physicist, of asking him 
a series of fumbling questions on the subject 
of modern theories of matter; for an hour I 
stumbled like a child, supported by a strong 
hand, in a dim and unfamiliar world, among 
the mysterious essences of things. I should 
like to try to reproduce it here, but I have no 
doubt I should reproduce it all wrong. Still, 
it was deeply inspiring to look out into chaos, 
to hear the rush and motion of atoms, moving 
in vast vortices, to learn that inside the hard- 
est and most impenetrable of substances there 
was probably a feverish intensity of inner 
motion. I do not know that I acquired any 
precise knowledge, but I drank deep draughts 
of wonder and awe. The great man, with his 
amused and weary smile, was infinitely gentle, 
and left me, I will say, far more conscious of 
the beauty and the holiness of knowledge. I 
said something to him about the sense of 
power that such knowledge must give. " Ah ! " 
he said, " much of what I have told you is not 
proved, it is only suspected. We are very 
much in the dark about these things yet. 
Probably if a physicist of a hundred years 
hence could overhear me, he would be amazed 



13^ At Large 

to think that a sensible man could make such 
puerile statements. Power — no, it is not that ! 
It rather makes one realise one's feebleness in 
being so uncertain about things that are ab- 
solutely certain and precise in themselves, if 
we could but see the truth. It is much more 
like the apostle who said, "Lord, I believe; 
help Thou my unbelief." The thing one won- 
ders at is the courage of the men who dare to 
think they know/^ 

In one region I own that I dread and dis- 
like the tyranny of the specialist, and that is 
the region of metaphysical and religious specu- 
lation. People who indulge themselves in 
this form of speculation are apt to be told by 
theologians and metaphysicians that they 
ought to acquaint themselves with the trend 
of theological and metaphysical criticism. It 
seems to me like telling people that they must 
not ascend mountains unless they are accom- 
panied by guides, and have studied the history 
of previous ascents. " Yes," the professional 
says, " that is just what I mean ; it is mere 
foolhardiness to attempt these arduous places 
unless you know exactly what you are about." 

To that I reply that no one is bound to go 



Specialism 137 

up hills, but that every one who reflects at 
all is confronted by religious and philosophical 
problems. We all have to live, and we are all 
more or less experts in life. When one con- 
siders the infinite importance to every human 
spirit of these problems, and when one further 
considers how very little theologians and phi- 
losophers have ever effected in the direction 
of enlightening us as to the object of life, the 
problem of pain and evil, the preservation of 
identity after death, the question of necessity 
and free-will, surely, to attempt to silence peo- 
ple on these matters because they have not 
had a technical training is nothing more than 
an attempt wilfully to suppress evidence on 
these points. The only way in which it may 
be possible to arrive at the solution of these 
things is to know how they appeal to and 
affect normal minds. I would rather hear the 
experience of a life-long sufferer on the pro- 
blem of pain, or of a faithful lover on the mys- 
tery of love, or of a poet on the influence of 
natural beauty, or of an unselfish and humble 
saint on the question of faith in the unseen, 
than the evidence of the most subtle theologian 
or metaphysician in the world. Many of us, 



138 At Large 

if we are specialists in nothing else, are spe 
cialists in life; we have arrived at a point of 
view; some particular aspect of things has 
come home to us with a special force; and 
what really enriches the hope and faith of the 
world is the experience of candid and sincere 
persons. The specialist has often had no time 
or opportunity to observe life; all he has 
observed is the thought of other secluded per- 
sons, persons whose view has been both nar- 
row and conventional, because they have not 
had the opportunity of correcting their tradi- 
tional preconceptions by life itself. 

I call, with all the earnestness that I can 
muster, upon all intelligent, observant, specu- 
lative people, who have felt the problems of 
life weigh heavily upon them, not to be dis- 
mayed by the disapproval of technical stu- 
dents, but to come forward and tell us what 
conclusions they have formed. The work of 
the trained specialist is essentially, in religion 
and philosophy, a negative work. He can show 
us how erroneous beliefs, which coloured the 
minds of men at certain ages and eras, grew 
up. He can show us what can be disregarded, 
as being only the conventional belief of the 



Specialism 139 

time; he can indicate, for instance, how a 
false conception of supernatural interference 
with natural law grew up in an age when, for 
want of trained knowledge, facts seemed 
fortuitous occurrences which were really con- 
ditioned by natural laws. The poet and the 
idealist make and cast abroad the great vital 
ideas, which the specialist picks up and 
analyses. But we must not stop at analysis; 
we want positive progress as well. We want 
people to tell us, candidly and simply, how 
their own soul grew, how it cast off conven- 
tional beliefs, how it justified itself in being 
hopeful or the reverse. There never was a time 
when more freedom of thought and expres- 
sion was conceded to the individual. A man 
is no longer socially banned for being heret- 
ical, schismatic, or liberal-minded. I want 
people to say frankly what real part spiritual 
agencies or religious ideas have played in 
their lives, whether such agencies and ideas 
have modified their conduct, or have been 
modified by their inclinations and habits. I 
long to know a thousand things about my fel- 
low-men — how they bear pain, how they con- 
front the prospect of death, the hopes by 



I40 At Large 

which they live, the fears that overshadow 
them, the stuff of their lives, the influence of 
their emotions. It has long been thought, 
and it is still thought by many narrow pre- 
cisians, indelicate and egotistical to do this. 
And the result is that we can find in books 
all the things that do not matter, while the 
thoughts that are of deep and vital interest 
are withheld. 

Such books as Montaigne's Essays, Rous- 
seau's Confessions, Mrs. Carlyle's Letters, 
Mrs. Oliphanfs Memoirs, the Autobiography 
of B. R. Hay don, to name but a few books that 
come into my mind, are the sort of books that 
I crave for, because they are books in which 
one sees right into the heart and soul of an- 
other. Men can confess to a book what they 
cannot confess to a friend. Why should it be 
necessary to veil this essence of humanity in 
the dreary melodrama, the trite incident of a 
novel or a play? Things in life do not hap- 
pen as they happen in novels or plays. Oliver 
Twist, in real life, does not get accidentally 
adopted by his grandfather's oldest friend, 
and commit his sole burglary in the house of 
his aunt. We do not want life to be trans- 



Specialism 141 

planted into trim garden-plots; we want to 
see it at home, as it grows in all its native 
wildness, on the one hand; and to know the 
idea, the theory, the principle that underlie 
it on the other. How few of us there are who 
7na7ce our lives into anything! We accept our 
limitations, we drift with them, while we in- 
dignantly assert the freedom of the will. The 
best sermon in the world is to hear of one who 
has struggled with life, bent or trained it to 
his will, plucked or rejected its fruit, but all 
upon some principle. It matters little what 
we do; it matters enormously how we do it. 
Considering how much has been said, and 
sung, and written, and recorded, and prated, 
and imagined, it is strange to think how little 
is ever told us directly about life; we see it in 
glimpses and flashes, through half-open doors, 
or as one sees it from a train gliding into a 
great town, and looks into back windows and 
yards sheltered from the street. We philoso- 
phise, most of us, about anything but life ; and 
one of the reasons why published sermons 
have such vast sales is because, however 
clumsily and conventionally, it is with life 
that they try to deal. 



142 At Large 

This kind of specialising is not recognised 
as a technical form of it at all, and yet how 
far nearer and closer and more urgent it is 
for us than any other kind. I have a hope 
that we are at the beginning of an era of plain- 
speaking in these matters. Too often, with 
the literary standard of decorum which pre- 
vails, such self-revelations are brushed aside 
as morbid, introspective, egotistical. They 
are no more so than any other kind of inves- 
tigation, for all investigation is conditioned 
by the personality of the investigator. All 
that is needed is that an observer of life should 
be perfectly candid and sincere, that he should 
not speak in a spirit of vanity or self-glorifi- 
cation, that he should try to disentangle what 
are the real motives that make him act or 
refrain from acting. 

As an instance of what I mean by confes- 
sion of the frankest order, dealing in this case 
not only with literature but also with moral- 
ity, let me take the sorrowful words which 
Ruskin wrote in his Prwterita, as a wearied 
and saddened man, when there was no longer 
any need for him to pretend anything, or to 
involve any of his own thoughts or beliefs in 



Specialism 143 

any sort of disguise. He took up Shakespeare 
at Macugnaga, in 1840, and he asks why the 
loveliest of Shakespeare's plays should be " all 
mixed and encumbered with languid and com- 
mon work — to one's best hope spurious cer- 
tainly, so far as original, idle and disgraceful 
— and all so inextricably and mysteriously 
that the writer himself is not only unknow- 
able, but inconceivable; and his wisdom so 
useless, that at this time of being and speak- 
ing, among active and purposeful Englishmen, 
I know not one who shows a trace of ever 
having felt a passion of Shakespeare's, or 
learnt a lesson from him." 

That is of course the sad cry of one who is 
interested in life primarily, and in art only 
so far as it can minister to life. It may be 
strained and exaggerated, but how far more 
vital a saying than to expand in voluble and 
vapid enthusiasm over the insight and noble- 
ness of Shakespeare, if one has not really felt 
one's life modified by that mysterious mind! 

Of course such self-revelation as I speak of 
will necessarily fall into the hands of unquiet, 
dissatisfied, melancholy people. If life is a 
commonplace and pleasant sort of business, 



144 At Large 

there is nothing particular to say or to think 
about it. But for all those — and they are 
many — who feel that life misses, by some 
blind, inevitable movement, being the gracious 
and beautiful thing it seems framed to be, 
how can such as these hold their peace? And 
how, except by facing it all, and looking pa- 
tiently and bravely at it, can we find a remedy 
for its sore sicknesses? That method has been 
used, and used with success in every other 
kind of investigation, and we must investi- 
gate life too, even if it turns out to be all a 
kind of Mendelism, moved and swayed by ab- 
solutely fixed laws, which take no account of 
what we sorrowfully desire. 

Let us, then, gather up our threads a little. 
Let us first confront the fact that, under pres- 
ent conditions, in the face of the mass of 
records and books and accumulated traditions, 
arts and sciences must make progress little 
by little, line by line, in skilled technical 
hands. Fine achievement in every region be- 
comes more difficult every day, because there 
is so much that is finished and perfected be- 
hind us; and if the conditions of our lives call 
us to some strictly limited path, let us advance 



Specialism 145 

wisely and humbly, step by step, without pride 
or vanity. But let us not forget, in the face 
of the frigidities of knowledge, that if they 
are the mechanism of life, emotion and hope 
and love and admiration are the steam. 
Knowledge is only valuable in so far as it 
makes the force of life effective and vigorous. 
And thus if we have breasted the strange cur- 
rent of life, or even if we have been ourselves 
overpowered and swept away by it, let us try, 
in whatever region we have the power, to let 
that experience have some value for ourselves 
and others. If we can say it or write it, so 
much the better. There are thousands of peo- 
ple moving through the world who are wearied 
and bewildered, and who are looking out for 
any message of hope and joy that may give them 
courage to struggle on; but if we cannot do 
that, we can at least live life temperately and 
cheerfully and sincerely: if we have bungled, 
if we have slipped, we can do something to 
help others not to go light-heartedly down 
the miry path; we can raise them up if they 
have fallen, we can cleanse the stains, or we can 
at least give them the comfort of feeling that 
they are not sadly and insupportably alone. 



yii 

Our Lack of Great Men 

IT is often mournfully reiterated that the 
present age is not an age of great men, 
and I have sometimes wondered if it is true. 
In the first place I do not feel sure that an 
age is the best judge of its own greatness; a 
great age is generally more interested in do- 
ing the things which afterwards cause it to 
be considered great, than in wondering 
whether it is great. Perhaps the fact that we 
are on the look-out for great men, and com- 
plaining because we cannot find them, is the 
best proof of our second-rateness ; I do not 
imagine that the Elizabethan writers were 
much concerned with thinking whether they 
were great or not; they were much more oc- 
cupied in having a splendid time, and in say- 
146 



Our Lack of Great Men 147 

iDg as eagerly as they could all the delightful 
thoughts which came crowding to the utter- 
ance, than in pondering whether they were 
worthy of admiration. In the annals of the 
Renaissance one gets almost weary of the re- 
cords of brilliant persons, like Leo Battista 
Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci, who were 
architects, sculptors, painters, musicians, 
athletes, and writers all in one; who could 
make crowds weep by twanging a lute, ride 
the most vicious horses, take standing jumps 
over the heads of tall men, and who were, 
moreover, so impressionable that books were 
to them as jewels and flowers, and who " grew 
faint at the sight of sunsets and stately per- 
sons." Such as these, we may depend upon 
it, had little time to give to considering their 
own effect upon posterity. When the sun 
rules the day, there is no question about his 
supremacy; it is when we are concerned with 
scanning the sky for lesser lights to rule the 
night that we are wasting time. To go about 
searching for somebody to inspire one testi- 
fies, no doubt, to a certain lack of fire and 
initiative. But, on the other hand, there have 
been many great men whose greatness their 



148 At Large 

contemporaries did not recognise. We tend 
at the present time to honour achievements 
when they have begun to grow a little mouldy ; 
we seldom accord ungrudging admiration to 
a prophet when he is at his best. Moreover, 
in an age like the present, when the general 
average of accomplishment is remarkably high, 
it is more difficult to detect greatness. It is 
easier to see big trees when they stand out 
over a copse than when they are lost in the 
depths of the forest. 

Now there are two modes and methods of 
being great; one is by largeness, the other by 
intensity. A great man can be cast in a big, 
magnanimous mould, without any very special 
accomplishments or abilities; it may be very 
difficult to praise any of his faculties very 
highly, but he is there. Such men are the 
natural leaders of mankind; they effect what 
they effect not by any subtlety or ingenuity. 
They see in a wide, general way what they 
want, they gather friends and followers 
and helpers round them, and put the right 
man on at the right piece of work. They 
perform what they perform by a kind of volu- 
minous force, which carries other personali- 



Our Lack of Great Men 149 

ties away; for lesser natures, as a rule, do not 
like supreme responsibility; they enjoy what 
is to ordinary people the greatest luxury in 
the world, namely, the being sympathetically 
commandeered, and duly valued. Inspiration 
and leadership are not common gifts, and there 
are abundance of capable people who cannot 
strike out a novel line of their own, but can 
do excellent work if they can be inspired and 
led. I was once for a short time brought into 
close contact with a man of this kind; it was 
impossible to put down on paper or to ex- 
plain to those who did not know him what 
his claim to greatness was. I remember being 
asked by an incredulous outsider where his 
greatness lay, and I could not name a single 
conspicuous quality that my hero possessed. 
But he dominated his circle, for all that, and 
many of them were men of far greater intel- 
lectual force than himself. He had his own 
way ; if he asked one to do a particular thing, 
one felt proud to be entrusted with it, and 
amply rewarded by a word of approval. It 
was possible to take a different view from the 
view which he took of a matter or a situation, 
but it was impossible to express one's dissent 



ISO At Large 

in his presence. A few halting, fumbling 
words of his were more weighty than many a 
facile and voluble oration. Personally I often 
mistrusted his judgment, but I followed him 
with an eager delight. With such men as 
these, posterity is often at a loss to know why 
they impressed their contemporaries, or why 
they continue to be spoken of with reverence 
and enthusiasm. The secret is that it is a 
kind of moral and magnetic force, and the la- 
mentable part of it is that such men, if they 
are not enlightened and wise, may do more 
harm than good, because they tend to stereo- 
type what ought to be changed and renewed. 

That is one way of greatness; a sort of big, 
blunt force that overwhelms and uplifts, like 
a great sea-roller, yielding at a hundred small 
points, yet crowding onwards in soft volume 
and ponderous weight. 

Two interesting examples of this impres- 
sive and indescribable greatness seem to have 
been Arthur Hallam and the late Mr. W. E. 
Henley. In the case of Arthur Hallam, the 
eulogies which his friends pronounced upon 
him seem couched in terms of an intemperate 
extravagance. The fact that the most splen- 



Our Lack of Great Men 151 

did panegyrics upon him were uttered by men 
of high genius is not in itself more conclusive 
than if such panegyrics had been conceived by 
men of lesser quality, because the greater that 
a man is the more readily does he perceive and 
more magniloquently acknowledge greatness. 
Apart from In Blemoriam, Tennyson's re- 
corded utterances about Arthur Hallam are 
expressed in terms of almost hyperbolical 
laudation. I once was fortunate enough to 
have the opportunity of asking Mr. Gladstone 
about Arthur Hallam. Mr. Gladstone had 
been his close friend at Eton and his constant 
companion. His eye flashed, his voice gath- 
ered volume, and with a fine gesture of his 
hand he said that he could only deliberately 
affirm that physically, intellectually, and mor 
ally, Arthur Hallam approached more nearly 
to an ideal of human perfection than any one 
whom he had ever seen. And yet the picture 
of Hallam at Eton represents a young man of 
an apparently solid and commonplace type, 
with a fresh colour, and almost wholly desti- 
tute of distinction or charm; while his extant 
fragments of prose and poetry are heavy, 
verbose, and elaborate, and without any mem- 



1 52 At Large 

orable quality. It appears indeed as if he 
had exercised a sort of hypnotic influence upon 
his contemporaries. Neither does he seem to 
have produced a very gracious impression upon 
outsiders who happened to meet him. There 
is a curious anecdote told by some one who 
met Arthur Hallam travelling with his father 
on the Continent only a short time before his 
sudden death. The narrator says that he saw 
with a certain satisfaction how mercilessly 
the young man criticised and exposed his 
father's statements, remembering how merci- 
less the father had often been in dealing sum- 
marily with the arguments and statements of 
his own contemporaries. One asks oneself in 
vain what the magnetic charm of his presence 
and temperament can have been. It was un- 
doubtedly there, and jet it seems wholly 
irrecoverable. The same is true, in a different 
region, with the late Mr. W. E. Henley. His 
literary performances, with the exception of 
some half a dozen poetical pieces, have no great 
permanent value. His criticisms were vehe- 
ment and complacent, but represent no great 
delicacy of analysis nor breadth of view. 
His treatment of Stevenson, considering the 



Our Lack of Great Men 153 

circumstances of the case, was ungenerous and 
irritable. Yet those who were brought into 
close contact with Henley recognised some- 
thing magnanimous, noble, and fiery about 
him, which evoked a passionate devotion. I re- 
member shortly before his death reading an 
appreciation of his work by a faithful admirer, 
who described him as ^^ another Dr. Johnson," 
and speaking of his critical judgment, said, 
" Mr. Henley is pontifical in his wrath ; it 
pleased him, for example, to deny to De Quin- 
cey the title to write English prose-" That a 
criticism so arrogant, so saiigrenu, should be 
re-echoed with such devoted commendation is 
a proof that the writer's independent judg- 
ment was simply swept away by Hen- 
ley's personality; and in both these cases one 
is merely brought face to face with the fact 
that though men can earn the admiration of 
the world by effective performance, the most 
spontaneous and enduring gratitude is given 
to individuality. 

The other way of greatness is the way of 
intensity, that focuses all its impact at some 
brilliant point, like a rapier-thrust or a flash 
of lightning. Men with this kind of great- 



154 At Large 

ness have generally some supreme and dazzling 
accomplishment, and the rest of their nature 
is often sacrificed to one radiant faculty. 
Their power, in some one single direction, 
is absolutely distinct and unquestioned; and 
these are the men who, if they can gather up 
and express the forces of some vague and wide- 
spread tendency, some blind and instinctive 
movement of men's minds, form as it were the 
cutting edge of a weapon. They do not supply 
the force, but they concentrate it ; and it is men 
of this type who are often credited with the 
bringing about of some profound and revolu- 
tionary change, because they summarise and 
define some huge force that is abroad. Not to 
travel far for instances, such a man was 
Rousseau. The air of his period was full of 
sentiments and emotions and ideas; he was 
not himself a man of force; he was a dreamer 
and a poet; but he had the matchless gift of 
ardent expression, and he was able to say 
both trenchantly and attractively exactly what 
every one was vaguely meditating. 

Now let us take some of the chief depart- 
ments of human effort, some of the provinces 



Our Lack of Great Men 155 

in which men attain supreme fame, and con- 
sider what kinds of greatness we should 
expect the present day to evoke. In the depart- 
ment of warfare, we have had few opportuni- 
ties of late to discover high strategical genius. 
Our navy has been practically unemployed, 
and the South African War was just the sort 
of campaign to reveal the deficiencies of an 
elaborate and not very practical peace estab- 
lishment. Though it solidified a few reputa- 
tions and pricked the bubble of some few 
others, it certainly did not reveal any subtle 
adaptability in our generals. It was Lord 
North, I think, w^ho, when discussing with his 
Cabinet a list of names of officers suggested 
for the conduct of a campaign, said, " I do not 
know what efi'ect these names produce upon 
you, gentlemen, but I confess they make me 
tremble." The South African War can hardly 
be said to have revealed that we have 
many generals who closely correspond to 
Wordsworth's description of the Happy War- 
rior, but rather induced the tremulousness 
which Lord North experienced. Still, if, in 
the strategical region, our solitary recent cam- 



156 At Large 

paign rather tends to prove a deficiency of 
men of supreme gifts, it at all events proved 
a considerable degree of competence and de- 
votion. I could not go so far as a recent 
writer who regretted the termination of the 
Boer War because it interrupted the evolution 
of tactical science, but it is undoubtedly true 
that the growing aversion to war, the intense 
dislike to the sacrifice of human life, creates 
an atmosphere unfavourable to the develop- 
ment of high military genius; because great 
military reputations in times past have gen- 
erally been acquired by men who had no such 
scruples, but who treated the material of their 
armies as pawns to be freely sacrificed to the 
attainment of victory. 

Then there is the region of statesmanship; 
and here it is abundantly clear that the social 
conditions of the day, the democratic current 
which runs with increasing spirit in polit- 
ical channels are unfavourable to the develop- 
ment of individual genius. The prize falls to 
the sagacious opportunist; the statesman is 
less and less of a navigator, and more and more 
of a pilot, in times when popular feeling is 
conciliated and interpreted rather than in- 



Our Lack of Great Men 157 

spired and guided. To be far-seeing and dar- 
ing is a disadvantage; the most approved 
leader is the man who can harmonise discord- 
ant sections, and steer round obvious and 
pressing difficulties. Geniality and honhomie 
are more valuable qualities than prescience or 
nobility of aim. The more representative that 
government becomes, the more does originality 
give place to malleability. The more fluid that 
the conceptions of a statesman are, the greater 
that his adaptability is, the more acceptable 
he becomes. Since Lord Beaconsfield, with all 
his trenchant mystery, and Mr. Gladstone, 
with his voluble candour, there have been no 
figures of unquestioned supremacy on the po- 
litical stage. Even so, the effect in both cases 
was to a great extent the effect of personality. 
The further that these two men retire into the 
past, the more that they are judged by the 
written record, the more does the tawdriness 
of Lord Beaconsfield's mind, his absence of 
sincere convictions appear, as well as the 
pedestrianism of Mr. Gladstone's mind, and 
his lack of critical perception. I have heard 
Mr. Gladstone speak, and on one occasion I 
had the task of reporting for a daily paper a 



158 At Large 

private oration on a literary subject. I was 
thrilled to the very marrow of my being by 
the address. The parchment pallor of the 
orator, his glowing and blazing eyes, his leo- 
nine air, the voice that seemed to have a sort 
of physical effect on the nerves, his great sweep- 
ing gestures, all held the audience spell-bound. 
I felt at the time that I had never before real- 
ised the supreme and vital importance of the 
subject on which he spoke. But when I tried 
to reconstruct from the ashes of my industri- 
ous notes the mental conflagration which I 
had witnessed, I was at a complete loss to 
understand what had happened. The records 
were not only dull, they seemed essentially 
trivial, and almost overwhelmingly unimpor- 
tant. But the magic had been there. Apart 
from the substance, the performance had been 
literally enchanting. I do not honestly be- 
lieve that Mr. Gladstone was a man of great 
intellectual force, or even of very deep emo- 
tions. He was a man of extraordinarily 
vigorous and robust brain, and he was a su- 
preme oratorical artist. There is intellect, 
charm, humour in abundance in the parlia- 
mentary forces; there was probably never a 



Our Lack of Great Men 159 

time when there were so many able and am- 
bitious men to be found in the rank and file 
of parliamentarians. But that is not enough. 
There is no supremely impressive and com- 
manding figure on the stage ; greatness seems to 
be distributed rather than concentrated; but 
probably neither this, nor political conditions, 
would prevent the generous recognition of 
supreme genius, if it were there to recognise. 

In art and literature, I am inclined to be- 
lieve that we shall look back to the Victorian 
era as a time of great activity and high per- 
formance. The two tendencies here which 
militate against the appearance of the great- 
est figures are, in the first place, the great ac- 
cumulations of art and literature, and in the 
second place the democratic desire to share 
those treasures. The accumulation of pic- 
tures, music, and books makes it undoubtedly 
very hard for a new artist, in whatever region, 
to gain prestige. There is so much that is un- 
doubtedly great and good for a student of art 
and literature to make acquaintance with, 
that we are apt to be content with the old vint- 
ages. The result is that there are a good 
many artists who, in a time of less produc- 



i6o At Large 

tivity, would have made themselves an endur- 
ing reputation, and who now must be content 
to be recognised only by a few. The difificulty 
can, I think, only be met by some principle of 
selection being more rigidly applied. We 
shall have to be content to skim the cream 
of the old as well as of the new, and to allow 
the second-rate work of first-rate performers 
to sink into oblivion. But at the same time 
there might be a great future before any artist 
who could discover a new medium of utter- 
ance. It seems at present, to take literature, 
as if every form of human expression had 
been exploited. We have the lyric, the epic, 
the satire, the narrative, the letter, the diary, 
conversation, all embalmed in art. But there 
is probably some other medium possible which 
will become perfectly obvious the moment it 
is seized upon and used. To take an instance 
from pictorial art. At present, colour is only 
used in a genre manner, to clothe some dra- 
matic motive. But there seems no prima 
facie reason why colour should not be used 
symphonically like music. In music we ob- 
tain pleasure from an orderly sequence of vi- 
brations, and there seems no real reason why 



Our Lack of Great Men i6i 

the eye should not be charmed with colour- 
sequences just as the ear is charmed with 
sound-sequences. So in literature it would 
seem as though we might get closer still to the 
expression of mere personality, by the medium 
of some sublimated form of reverie, the 
thought blended and tinged in the subtlest 
gradations, without the clumsy necessity 
of sacrificing the sequence of thought to the 
barbarous devices of metre and rhyme, or to 
the still more childish devices of incident and 
drama. Flaubert, it will be remembered, 
looked forward to a time when a writer would 
not require a subject at all, but would express 
emotion and thought directly rather than 
pictorially. To utter the unuttered thought — 
that is really the problem of literature in the 
future; and if a writer could be found to free 
himself from all stereotyped forms of expres- 
sion, and to give utterance to the strange tex- 
ture of thought and fancy, which differentiates 
each single personality so distinctly, so in- 
tegrally, from other personalities, and which 
we cannot communicate to our dearest and 
nearest, he might enter upon a new province 
of art. 



i62 At Large 

But the second tendency which at the pres- 
ent moment dominates writers is, as I have 
said, the rising democratic interest in the 
things of the mind. This is at present a very 
inchoate and uncultivated interest; but in 
days of cheap publication and large audiences 
it dominates many writers disastrously. The 
temptation is a grievous one — to take advan- 
tage of a market — not to produce what is ab- 
solutely the best, but what is popular and 
effective. It is not a wholly ignoble tempta- 
tion. It is not only the temptation of wealth, 
though in an age of comfort, which values 
social respectability so highly, wealth is a 
great temptation. But the temptation is 
rather to gauge success by the power of ap- 
peal. If a man has ideas at all, he is naturally 
anxious to make them felt; and if he can do 
it best by spreading his ideas rather thinly, 
by making them attractive to enthusiastic 
people of inferior intellectual grip, he feels 
he is doing a noble work. The truth is that 
in literature the democracy desires not ideas 
but morality. All the best-known writers of 
the Victorian age have been optimistic moral- 
ists, Browning, Ruskin, Carlyle, Tennyson. 



Our Lack of Great Men 163 

They have been admired because they concealed 
their essential conventionality under a slight 
perfume of unorthodoxy. They all in reality 
pandered to the complacency of the age, in a 
way in which Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, and 
Keats did not pander. The democracy loves 
to be assured that it is generous, high-minded, 
and sensible. It is in reality timid, narrow- 
minded, and Pharisaical. It hates indepen- 
dence and originality, and loves to believe that 
it adores both. It loves Mr. Kipling because 
he assures people that vulgarity is not a sin; 
it loves Mr. Bernard Shaw because he per- 
suades people that they are cleverer than they 
imagined. The fact is that great men, in lit- 
erature at all events, must be content, at the 
present time, to be unrecognised and unao- 
claimed. They must be content to be of the 
happy company of whom Mr. Swinburne 
writes : — 

"In the garden of death, where the singers, whose 
names are deathless, 
One with another make music unheard of men." 

Then there is the region of Science, and 
here I am not qualified to speak, because I 



1 64 At Large 

know no science^ and have not even taught it, 
as Mr. Arthur Sidgwick said. I do not really 
know what constitutes greatness in science. 
I suppose that the great man of science is the 
man who to a power of endlessly patient in- 
vestigation joins a splendid imaginative, or 
perhaps deductive power, like Newton or Dar- 
win. But we who stand at the threshold of 
the scientific era are perhaps too near the 
light, and too much dazzled by the results of 
scientific discovery to say who is great and 
who is not great. I have met several dis- 
tinguished men of science, and I have thought 
some of them to be men of obviously high in- 
tellectual gifts, and some of them men of inert 
and secretive temperaments. But that is 
only natural, for to be great in other depart- 
ments generally implies a certain knowledge 
of the world, or at all events of the thought of 
the world; whereas the great man of science 
may be moving in regions of thought that 
may be absolutely incommunicable to the or- 
dinary person. But I do not suppose that 
scientific greatness is a thing which can be 
measured by the importance of the practical 
results of a discovery. I mean that a man 



Our Lack of Great Men 165 

may hit upon some process, or some treatment 
of disease, which may be of incalculable bene- 
fit to humanity, and yet not be really a great 
man of science, only a fortunate discoverer, 
and incidentally a great benefactor to hu- 
manity. The unknown discoverers of things 
like the screw or the wheel, persons lost in 
the mists of antiquity, could not, I suppose, be 
ranked as great men of science. The great 
man of science is the man who can draw some 
stupendous inference, which revolutionises 
thought and sets men hopefully at work on 
some problem which does not so much add to 
the convenience of humanity as define the laws 
of nature. We are still surrounded by in- 
numerable and awful mysteries of life and 
being; the evidence which will lead to their 
solution is probably in our hands and plain 
enough, if any one could but see the bearing of 
facts which are known to the simplest child. 
There is little doubt, I suppose, that the great- 
est reputations of recent years have been made 
in science; and perhaps when our present age 
ha« globed itself into a cycle, we shall be 
amazed at the complaint that the present era 
is lacking in great men. We are busy in look- 



1 66 At Large 

ing for greatness in so many directions, and we 
are apt to suppose, from long use, that great- 
ness is so inseparably connected with some 
form of human expression, whether it be the 
utterance of thought or the marshalling of 
armies, that we may be overlooking a more 
stable form of greatness, which will be patent 
to those that come after. My own belief is 
that the condition of science at the present 
day answers best to the conditions which we 
have learnt to recognise in the past as the 
fruitful soil of greatness. I mean that when 
we put our finger, in the past, on some period 
which seems to have been producing great 
work in a great way, we generally find it in 
some knot or school of people, intensely ab- 
sorbed in what they were doing, and doing it 
with a whole-hearted enjoyment, loving the 
work more than the rewards of it, and indif- 
ferent to the pursuit of fame. Such it seems 
to me is the condition of science at the pres- 
ent time, and it is in science, I am inclined 
to think, that our heroes are probably to be 
found. 

I do not, then, feel at all sure that we are 
lacking in great men, though it must be ad- 



Our Lack of Great Men 167 

mitted that we are lacking in men whose su- 
premacy is recognised. I suppose we mean 
by a great man one who in some region of 
human performance is confessedly pre-emi- 
nent; and he must further have a theory of 
his own, and a power of pursuing that theory 
in the face of depreciation and even hostility. 
I do not think that great men have often been 
indifferent to criticism. Often, indeed, by 
virtue of a greater sensitiveness and a keener 
perception, they have been profoundly affected 
by unpopularity and the sense of being misun- 
derstood. Carlyle, Tennyson, Ruskin, for in- 
stance, were men of almost morbid sensibility, 
and lived in sadness; and, on the other hand, 
there are few great men who have not been 
affected for the worse by premature success. 
The best soil for greatness to grow up in 
would seem to be an early isolation, sustained 
against the disregard of the world by the 
affection and admiration of a few kindred 
minds. Then when the great man has learned 
his method and his message, and learned too 
not to over-value the popular verdict, success 
may mature and mellow his powers. Yet of 
how many great men can this be said? As a 



i68 At Large 

rule, indeed, a great man's best work has been 
done in solitude and disfavour, and he has 
attained his sunshine when he can no longer 
do his best work. 

The question is whether the modern condi- 
tions of life are unfavourable to greatness; 
and I think that it must be confessed that 
they are. In the first place, we all know so 
much too about each other, and there is so 
eager a personal curiosity abroad, a curiosity 
about the smallest details of the life of any 
one who seems to have any power of perform- 
ance, that it encourages men to over-confi- 
dence, egotism, and mannerism. Again, the 
world is so much in love with novelty and 
sensation of all kinds, that facile successes 
are easily made and as easily obliterated. 
What so many jjeople admire is not greatness, 
but the realisation of greatness and its tangi- 
ble rewards. The result of this is that men 
who show any faculty for impressing the 
world are exploited and caressed, are played 
with as a toy, and as a toy neglected. And 
then, too, the age is deeply permeated by so- 
cial ambitions. Men love to be labelled, 
ticketed, decorated, differentiated from the 



Our Lack of Great Men 169 

crowd. Newspapers pander to this taste; 
and then the ease and rapidity of movement 
tempt men to a restless variety of experience, 
of travel, of society, of change, which is alien 
to the settled and sober temper in which great 
designs are matured. There is a story, not 
uncharacteristic, of modern social life, of a 
hostess who loved to assemble about her, in 
the style of Mrs. Leo Hunter, notabilities 
small and great, who was reduced to present- 
ing a young man who made his appearance at 

one of her gatherings as " Mr. , whose 

uncle, you will remember, was so terribly 

mangled in the railway accident at S ." 

It is this feverish desire to be distin- 
guished at any price which has its counter- 
part in the feverish desire to find objects of 
admiration. Not so can solid greatness be 
achieved. 

The plain truth is that no one can become 
great by taking thought, and still less by de- 
siring greatness. It is not an attainable 
thing; fame only is attainable. A man must 
be great in his own quiet way, and the greater 
he is, the less likely is he to concern himself 
with fame. It is useless to try and copy some 



170 At Large ; 

one else's greatness; that is like trying to look 
like some one else's portrait, even if it be a por- 
trait by Velasquez. Not that modesty is insepa- 
rable from greatness; there are abundance of 
great men who have been childishly and gro- 
tesquely vain; but in such cases it has been a 
greatness of performance, a marvellous faculty, 
not a greatness of soul. Hazlitt says some- 
where that modesty is the lowest of the 
virtues, and a real confession of the deficiency 
which it indicates. He adds that a man who 
underrates himself is justly undervalued by 
others. This is a cynical and a vulgar maxim. 
It is true that a great man must have a due 
sense of the dignity and importance of his 
work; but if he is truly great, he will have 
also a sense of relation and proportion, and 
not forget the minuteness of any individual 
atom. If he has a real greatness of soul, he 
will not be apt to compare himself with 
others, and he will be inclined to an even over- 
generous estimate of the value of the work of 
others. In no respect was the greatness of 
D. G. Rossetti more exemplified than in his 
almost extravagant appreciation of the work 
of his friends; and it was to this royalty of 



Our Lack of Great Men 171 

temperament that he largely owed his per- 
sonal supremacy. 

I would believe then that the lack of con- 
spicuous greatness is due at this time to the 
over-abundant vitality and eagerness of the 
world, rather than to any languor or listless- 
ness of spirit. The rise of the decadent school 
in art and literature is not the least sign 
of any indolent or corrupt deterioration. It 
rather shows a desperate appetite for testing 
sensation, a fierce hunger for emotional ex- 
perience, a feverish ambition to impress a 
point-of-view. It is all part of a revolt 
against settled ways and conventional theo- 
ries. I do not mean that we can expect to 
find greatness in this direction, for greatness 
is essentially well-balanced, calm, deliberate, 
and decadence is a sign of a neurotic and 
over-vitalised activity. 

Our best hope is that this excessive rest- 
lessness of spirit will produce a revolt against 
itself. The essence of greatness is uncon- 
ventionality, and restlessness is now becoming 
conventional. In education, in art, in litera- 
ture, in politics, in social life, we lose our- 
selves in denunciations of the dreamer and 



172 At Large 

the loafer. We cannot bear to see a slowly- 
moving, deliberate, self-contained spirit, 
advancing quietly on its discerned path. In- 
stead of being content to perform faithfully 
and conscientiously our allotted task, which 
is the way in which we can best help the 
world, we demand that every one should want 
to do good, to be responsible for some one else, 
to exhort, urge, beckon, restrain, manage. 
That is all utterly false and hectic. Our aim 
should be patience rather than effectiveness, 
sincerity rather than adaptability, to learn 
rather than to teach, to ponder rather than to 
persuade, to know the truth rather than to 
create illusion, however comforting, however 
delightful such illusion may be. 



VIII 
Shyness 

I HAVE no doubt that shyness is one of the 
old, primitive, aboriginal qualities that 
lurk in human nature — one of the crude ele- 
ments that ought to have been uprooted by 
civilisation, and security, and progress, and 
enlightened ideals, but which have not been 
uprooted, and are only being slowly elimi- 
nated. It is seen, as all aboriginal qualities 
are seen, at its barest among children, who 
often reflect the youth of the world, and are 
like little wild animals or infant savages, in 
spite of all the frenzied idealisation that child- 
hood receives from well-dressed and amiable 
people. 

Shyness is thus like those little bits of 
woods and copses which one finds in a country- 
side that has long been subdued and replen- 
ished, turned into arable land and pasture, 
173 



174 At Large 

with all the wildness and the irregularity 
ploughed and combed out of it; but still one 
comes upon some piece of dingle, where there 
is perhaps an awkward tilt in the ground, or 
some ancient excavation, or where a stream- 
head has cut out a steep channel, and there 
one finds a scrap of the old forest, a rood or 
two that has never been anything but wood- 
land. So with shyness; many of our old, 
savage qualities have been smoothed out, or 
glazed over, by education and inheritance, 
and only emerge in moments of passion and 
emotion. But shyness is no doubt the old sus- 
picion of the stranger, the belief that his mo- 
tives are likely to be predatory and sinister; 
it is the tendency to bob the head down into 
the brushwood, or to sneak behind the tree-bole 
on his approach. One sees a little child, 
washed and brushed and delicately apparelled, 
with silken locks and clear complexion, brought 
into a drawing-room to be admired; one sees 
the terror come upon her; she knows by ex- 
perience that she has nothing to expect but 
attention, and admiration, and petting; but 
you will see her suddenly cover her face with 
a tiny hand, relapse into dismal silence, even 



Shyness 175 

burst into tears and refuse to be comforted, 
till she is safely entrenched upon some famil- 
iar knee. 

I have a breezy, boisterous, cheerful friend, 
of transparent simplicity and goodness, who 
has never known the least touch of shyness 
from his cradle, who always says, if the sub- 
ject is introduced, that shyness is all mere 
self-consciousness, and that it comes from 
thinking about oneself. That is true, in a 
limited degree; but the diagnosis is no remedy 
for the disease, because shyness is as much 
a disease as a cold in the head, and no amount 
of effort can prevent the attacks of the com- 
plaint; the only remedy is either to avoid the 
occasions of the attacks — and that is impos- 
sible, unless one is to abjure the society of 
other people for good and all; — or else to 
practise resolutely the hardening process of 
frequenting society, until one gets a sort of 
courage out of familiarity. Yet even so, who 
that has ever really suffered from shyness 
does not feel his heart sink as he drives up in 
a brougham to the door of some strange house, 
and sees a grave butler advancing out of an 
unknown corridor, with figures flitting to and 



176 At Large 

fro in the background; what shy person is 
there who at such a moment would not give 
a considerable sum to be able to go back to 
the station and take the first train home? 
Or who again, as he gives his name to a serv- 
ant in some brightly-lighted hall, and ad- 
vances, with a hurried glance at his toilet, 
into a roomful of well-dressed people, buzzing 
with what Rossetti calls a " din of doubtful 
talk,'' would not prefer to sink into the earth 
like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and be reck- 
oned no more among the living? 

It is recorded in Tennyson's Life that he 
used to recommend to a younger brother the 
thought of the stellar spaces, swarming with 
constellations and traversed by planets at in- 
effable distances, as a cure for shyness; and a 
lady of my acquaintance used to endeavour 
as a girl to stay her failing heart on the 
thought of Eternity at such moments. It is 
all in vain; at the urgent moment one cares 
very little about the stellar motions, or the 
dim vistas of futurity, and very much indeed 
about the cut of one's coat, and the appear- 
ance of one's collar, and the glances of one's 
enemies; the doctrines of the Church, and the 



Shyness 177 

prospects of ultimate salvation, are things 
very light in the scales in comparison with 
the pressing necessities of the crisis, and the 
desperate need to appear wholly unconcerned! 
The wild and fierce shyness of childhood is 
superseded in most sensitive people, as life 
goes on, by a very different feeling — the shy- 
ness of adolescence, of which the essence, as 
has been well said, is " a shamefaced pride." 
The shyness of early youth is a thing which 
springs from an intense desire to delight, and 
impress, and interest other people, from want- 
ing to play a far larger and brighter part in 
the lives of every one else than any one in the 
world plays in any one else's life. Who does 
not recognise, with a feeling that is half con- 
tempt and half compassion, the sight of the 
eager pretentiousness of youth, the intense 
shame of confessing ignorance on any point, 
the deep desire to appear to have a stake in 
the world, and a well-defined, respected posi- 
tion? I met the other day a young man, of 
no particular force or distinction, w^ho was 
standing in a corner at a big social gather- 
ing, bursting with terror and importance com- 
bined. He was inspired, I would fain believe, 



17^ At Large 

by discerning a vague benevolence in my air 
and demeanour, to fix his attention on me. 
He had been staying at a house where there 
had been some important guests, and by some 
incredibly rapid transition of eloquence he 
was saying to me in a minute or two, " The 
Commander-in-Chief said to me the other 
day," and ^' The Archbishop pointed out to 
me a few days ago," giving, as personal con- 
fidences, scraps of conversation which he had 
no doubt overheard as an unwelcome adjunct 
to a crowded smoking-room, with the busy 
and genial elders wondering when the boys 
would have the grace to go to bed. My heart 
bled for him as I saw the reflection of my 
own pushing and pretentious youth, and I 
only desired that the curse should not fall 
upon him which has so often fallen upon 
myself, to recall ineffaceably, with a 
blush that still mantles my cheek in 
the silence and seclusion of my bedroom, 
in a wakeful hour, the thought of some such 
piece of transparent and ridiculous self-im- 
portance, shamefully uttered by myself, in a 
transport of ambitious vanity, long years ago. 
How out of proportion to the offence is the 



Shyness 179 

avenging phantom of memory which dogs one 
through the years for such stupidities! I 
remember that as a youthful undergraduate I 
went to stay in the house of an old family 
friend in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. 
The only other male guest was a grim and 
crusty don, sharp and trenchant in speech, 
and with a determination to keep young men 
in their place. At Cambridge he would have 
taken no notice whatever of me; but there, on 
alien ground, with some lurking impulse of 
far-off civility, he said to me when the ladies 
retired, " I am going to have a cigar ; you 
know your way to the smoking-room ? " I did 
not myself smoke in those days, so foolish was 
I and innocent; but recalling, I suppose, some 
similar remark made by an elderly and genial 
non-smoker under the same circumstances, I 
said pompously — I can hardly bring myself 
even now to write the words — " I don't smoke, 
but I will come and sit with you for the plea- 
sure of a talk." He gave a derisive snort, 
looked at me and said : " What ! not allowed 
to smoke yet? Pray don't trouble to come 
on my account." It was not a genial speech, 
and it made me feel, as it was intended to do, 



i8o • At Large 

insupportably silly. I did not make matters 
better, I recollect, on the following day, when 
on returning to Cambridge I offered to carry 
his bag up from the station — for he insisted 
on walking. He refused testily, and no doubt 
thought me, as in fact I was, a very spiritless 
young man, 

I remember, too, another incident of the same 
kind, happening about the same time. I was 
invited by a fellow-undergraduate to come to 
tea in his rooms, and to meet his people. 
After tea, in the lightness of his heart, my 
friend performed some singular antics, such 
as standing on his head like a clown, and fall- 
ing over the back of his sofa, alighting on his 
feet. I, who would not have executed such 
gambols for the world in the presence of the 
fairer sex, but anxious in an elderly way to 
express my sympathy with the performer, 
said, with what was meant to be a polite ad- 
miration, " I can't think how you do that ! " 
Upon which a shrewd and trenchant maiden- 
aunt who was present, and was delighting in 
the exuberance of her nephew, said to me 
briskly, " Mr. Benson, have you never been 
young?" I should be ashamed to say how: 



Shyness i8i 

often since I have arranged a neat repartee 
to that annoying question. At the same time 
I think that the behaviour both of the don and 
the aunt was distinctly unjust and unadvis- 
able. I am sure that the one way to train 
young people out of the miseries of shyness 
is for older people never to snub them in pub- 
licj or make them appear in the light of a fool. 
Such snubs fall plentifully and naturally 
from contemporaries. An elder person is 
quite within his rights in inflicting a grave 
and serious remonstrance in private. I do not 
believe that young people ever resent that, if 
at the same time they are allowed to defend 
themselves and state their case. But a merci- 
less elder who inflicts a public mortification 
is terribly unassailable and impregnable. For 
the shy person, who is desperately anxious to 
bear a sympathetic part, is quite incapable of 
retort; and that is why such assaults are 
unpardonable, because they are the merest 
bullying. 

The nicest people that I have known in life 
have been the people of kindly and sensible 
natures, who have been thoroughly spoilt as 
children, encouraged to talk, led to expect not 



1 82 At Large 

only toleration, but active kindness and sym- 
pathy from all. The worst of it is that such 
kindness is generally reserved for pretty and 
engaging children, and it is the awkward, un- 
pleasing, ungainly child who gets the slaps 
in public. But as in Tennyson-Turner's pretty 
poem of Lctty's Globe, a child's hand should 
be " welcome at all frontiers." Only delib- 
erate rudeness and insolence on the part of 
children should be publicly rebuked; and as 
a matter of fact both rudeness and insolence 
are far oftener the result of shyness than is 
easily supposed. 

After the shyness of adolescence there often 
follows a further stage. The shy person has 
learnt a certain wisdom; he becomes aware 
how easily he detects pretentiousness in other 
people, and realises that there is nothing to 
be gained by claiming a width of experience 
which he does not possess, and that the being 
unmasked is even more painful than feeling 
deficient and ill-equipped. Then too he learns 
to suspect that when he has tried to be im- 
pressive, he has often only succeeded in being 
priggish; and the result is that he falls into 
a kind of speechlessness, comforting himself, 



Shyness 183 

as he sits mute and awkward, unduly elon- 
gated, and with unaccountable projections of 
limb and feature, that if only other people 
were a little less self-absorbed, had the gift of 
perceiving hidden worth and real character, 
and could pierce a little below the surface, 
they would realise what reserves of force and 
tenderness lay beneath the heavy shapeless- 
ness of which he is still conscious. Then is 
the time for the shy person to apply himself 
to social gymnastics. He is not required to 
be voluble; but if he will practise bearing a 
hand, seeing what other people need and like, 
carrying on their line of thought, construct- 
ing small conversational bridges, asking the 
right questions, perhaps simulating an inter- 
est in the pursuits of others which he does not 
naturally feel, he may unloose the burden 
from his back. Then is the time to practise a 
sympathetic smile, or better still to allow one- 
self to indicate and even express the sympa- 
thy one feels; and the experimentalist will 
soon become aware how welcome such unob- 
trusive sympathy is. He will be amazed at 
first to find that, instead of being tolerated, 
he will be confided in; he will be regarded as 



184 At Large 

a pleasant adjunct to a party, and he will 
soon have the even pleasanter experience of 
finding that his own opinions and adventures, 
if they are not used to cap and surpass the 
opinions and adventures of others, but to 
elicit them, will be duly valued. Yet,, alas, 
a good many shy people never reach that stage, 
but take refuge in a critical and fastidious 
attitude. I had an elderly relative of this 
kind — who does not know the type? — who was 
a man of wide interests and accurate infor- 
mation, but a perfect terror in the domestic 
circle. He was too shy to mingle in general 
talk, but sat with an air of acute observation, 
with a dry smile playing over his face; later 
on, when the circle diminished, it pleased him 
to retail the incautious statements made by 
various members of the party, and correct' 
them with much acerbity. There are few 
things more terrific than a man who is both 
speechless and distinguished. I have known 
several such, and their presence lies like a 
blight over the most cheerful party. It is 
unhappily often the case that shyness is apt 
to exist side by side with considerable ability, 
and a shy man of this type regards distinc- 



Shyness 185 

tion as a kind of defensive armour, which may 
justify him in applying to others the contempt 
which he has himself been conscious of in- 
curring. One of the most disagreeable men 
I know is a man of great ability, who was 
bullied in his youth. The result upon him 
has been that he tends to believe that most 
people are inspired by a vague malevolence, 
and he uses his ability and his memory, not to 
add to the pleasure of a party, but to make 
his own power felt. I have seen this particu- 
lar man pass from an ungainly speechlessness 
into brutal onslaughts on inoffensive persons; 
and it is one of the most unpleasant trans- 
formations in the world. On the other hand, 
the modest and amiable man of distinction is 
one of the most agreeable figures it is possible 
to encounter. He is kind and deferential, and 
the indulgent deference of a distinguished 
man is worth its weight in gold. 

I was lately told a delightful story of a 
great statesman staying with a humble and 
anxious host, who had invited a party of sim- 
ple and unimportant people to meet the great 
man. The statesman came in late for dinner, 
and was introduced to the party; he made a 



1 86 At Large 

series of old-fashioned bows in all directions, 
but no one felt in a position to offer any ob- 
servations. The great man, at the conclusion 
of the ceremony, turned to his host, and said, 
in tones that had often thrilled a listening 
senate : " What very convenient jugs you have 
in your bedrooms ! They pour well ! " The 
social frost broke up; the company were de- 
lighted to find that the great man was inter- 
ested in mundane matters of a kind on which 
every one might be i)ermitted to have an opin- 
ion, and the conversation, starting from the 
humblest conveniences of daily life, melted in- 
sensibly into more liberal subjects. The fact 
is that, in ordinary life, kindness and sim- 
plicity are valued far more than brilliance; 
and the best brilliance is that which throws 
a novel and lambent light upon ordinary 
topics, rather than the brilliance which dis- 
ports itself in unfamiliar and exalted regions. 
The hero only ceases to be a hero to his valet 
if he is too lofty-minded to enter into the 
workings of his valef s mind, and cannot duly 
appraise the quality of his services. 

And then, too, to go back a little, there are 
certain defects, after all, which are appropri- 



Shyness 187 

ate at different times of life. A certain de- 
gree of shyness and even awkwardness is not at 
all a disagreeable thing — indeed it is rather a 
desirable quality — in the young. A perfectly 
self-possessed and voluble young man arouses 
in one a vague sense of hostility, unless it is 
accompanied by great modesty and ingenu- 
ousness. The artless prattler, who, in his 
teens, has an opinion on all subjects, 
and considers that opinion worth expressing, 
is pleasant enough, and saves one some 
embarrassment; but such people, alas, too 
often degenerate into the bores of later life. 
If a man's opinion is eventually going to be 
worth anything, he ought, I think, to pass 
through a tumultuous and even prickly stage, 
when he believes that he has an opinion, but 
cannot find the aplomb to formulate it. He 
ought to be feeling his way, to be in a vague 
condition of revolt against what is conven- 
tional. This is likely to be true not only 
in his dealings with his elders, but also in 
his dealings with his contemporaries. Young 
people are apt to regard a youthful doctrin- 
aire^ who has an opinion on everything, with 
sincere abhorrence. He bores them, and to 



1 88 At Large 

the young boredom is not a condition of pas- 
sive suffering, it is an acute form of torture. 
Moreover, the stock of opinions which a young 
man holds are apt to be parrot-cries repeated 
without any coherence from talks overheard 
and books skimmed. But in a modest and 
ingenuous youth, filled to the brim with eager 
interest and alert curiosity, a certain defer- 
ence is an adorable thing, one of the most deli- 
cate of graces; and it is a delightful task for 
an older person, who feels the sense of youth- 
ful charm, to melt stiffness away by kindly 
irony and gentle provocation, as Socrates did 
with his sweet-natured and modest boy- 
friends, so many centuries ago. 

The aplomb of the young generally means 
complacency; but one who is young and shy, 
and jet has the grace to think about the con- 
venience and pleasure of others, can be the 
most perfect companion in the world. One 
has then a sense of the brave and unsophisti- 
cated freshness of youth, that believes all 
things and hopes all things, the bloom of 
which has not been rubbed away by the rough 
touch of the world. It is only when that shy- 
ness is prolonged beyond the appropriate 



Shyness 189 

years, when it leaves a well-grown and hard- 
featured man gasping and incoherent, jerky 
and ungracious, that it is a painful and dis- 
concerting deformity. The only real shadow 
of early shyness is the quite disproportion- 
ate amount of unhappiness that conscious 
gaucherie brings with it. Two incidents con- 
nected with a ceremony most fruitful in nerv- 
ousness come back to my mind. 

When I was an Eton boy, I was staying 
with a country squire, a most courteous old 
gentleman with a high temper. The first 
morning, I contrived to come down a minute 
or two late for prayers. There was no chair 
for me. The squire suspended his reading 
of the Bible with a deadly sort of resigna- 
tion, and made a gesture to the portly butler. 
That functionary rose from his own chair, 
and with loudly creaking boots carried it 
across the room for my acceptance. I sat 
down, covered with confusion. The butler 
returned; and two footmen, who were sitting 
on a little form, made reluctant room for him. 
The butler sat down on one end of the form, 
unfortunately before his equipoise, the second 
footman, had taken his place at the other end. 



I go At Large 

The result was that the form tipped up, and 
a cataract of flunkies poured down upon the 
floor. There was a ghastly silence; then the 
Gadarene herd slowly recovered itself, and re- 
sumed its place. The squire read the chap- 
ter in an accent of suppressed fury, while the 
remainder of the party, with handkerchiefs 
pressed to their faces, made the most unac- 
countable sounds and motions for the rest of 
the proceeding. I was really comparatively 
guiltless, but the shadow of that horrid event 
sensibly clouded the whole of my visit. 

I was only a spectator of the other event. 
We had assembled for prayers in the dimly- 
lighted hall of the house of a church digni- 
tary, and the chapter had begun, when a man 
of almost murderous shyness, who was a 
guest, opened his bedroom door and came down 
the stairs. Our host suspended his reading. 
The unhappy man came down, but, instead 
of slinking to his place, went and stood in 
front of the fire, under the impression that 
the proceedings had not taken shape, and ad- 
dressed some remarks upon the weather to 
his hostess. In the middle of one of his sen- 
tences, he suddenly divined the situation, on 



Shyness 191 

seeing the row of servants sitting in a thievish 
corner of the hall. He took his seat with the 
air of a man driving to the guillotine, and I 
do not think I ever saw any one so much upset 
as he was for the remainder of his stay. Of 
course it may be said that a sense of humour 
should have saved a man from such a collapse 
of moral force, but a sense of humour re- 
quires to be very strong to save a man from 
the sense of having made a conspicuous fool 
of himself. 

I would add one more small reminiscence, of 
an event from which I can hardly say with 
honesty that I have yet quite recovered, 
although it took place nearly thirty years ago. 
I went, as a schoolboy, with my parents, to 
stay at a very big country house, the kind 
of place to which I was little used, where the 
advent of a stately footman to take away my 
clothes in the morning used to fill me with 
misery. The first evening there was a big 
dinner-party. I found myself sitting next my 
delightful and kindly hostess, my father be- 
ing on the other side of her. All went well 
till dessert, when an amiable, long-haired 
spaniel came to my side to beg of me. I had 



192 At Large 

nothing but grapes on my plate, and purely 
out of compliment I offered him one. He at 
once took it in his mouth, and hurried to a 
fine white fur rug in front of the hearth, where 
he indulged in some unaccountable convul- 
sions, rolling himself about and growling in 
an ecstasy of delight. My host, an irascible 
man, looked round, and then said : " Who the 
devil has given that dog a grape? " He added 
to my father, by way of explanation, " The 
fact is that if he can get hold of a grape, he 
rolls it on that rug, and it is no end of a nui- 
sance to get the stain out." I sat crimson 
with guilt, and was just about to falter out a 
confession, when my hostess looked up, and, 
seeing what had happened, said, " It was I, 
Frank; I forgot for the moment what I was 
doing." My gratitude for this angelic inter- 
vention was so great that I had not even the 
gallantry to own up, and could only repay 
my protectress with an intense and lasting 
devotion. I have no doubt that she explained 
matters afterwards to our host; and I con- 
trived to murmur my thanks later in the even- 
ing. But the shock had been a terrible one, 
and taught me not only wisdom, but the Christ- 



Shyness 193 

ian duty of intervening, if I could, to save 
the sliy from their sins and sufferings. 

Taught by the Power that pities me, 
I learn to pity them. 

But the consideration that emerges from 
these reminiscences is the somewhat bewilder- 
ing one, that shyness is a thing whch seems 
to be punished, both by immediate discomfort 
and by subsequent fantastic remorse, far more 
heavily than infinitely more serious moral 
lapses. The repentance that follows sin can 
hardly be more poignant than the agonising 
sense of guilt which steals over the waking 
consciousness on the morning that follows 
some such social lapse. In fact it must be con- 
fessed that most of us dislike appearing fools 
far more than we dislike feeling knaves; 
so that one wonders whether one does not 
dread the ridicule and disapproval of society 
more than one dreads the sense X)f a lapse 
from morality; the philosophical outcome of 
which would seem to be that the verdict of 
society upon our actions is at the base of mo- 
rality. We may feel assured that the result 

of moral lapses will ultimately be that we shall 

13 



194 At Large 



have to face the wrath of our Creator; but 
one hopes that side by side with justice will 
be found a merciful allowance for the force of 
temptation. But the final judgment is in any 
case not imminent, while the result of a social 
lapse is that we have to continue to face a 
disapproving and even a contemptuous circle, 
who will remember our failure with malicious 
pleasure, and whose sense of justice will not 
be tempered by any appreciable degree of 
mercy. Here again is a discouraging circum- 
stance, that when we call to mind some simi- 
larly compromising and grotesque adventure 
in the life of one of our friends, in spite of the 
fact that w^e well know the distress that the 
incident must have caused him, we still con- 
tinue to hug, and even to repeat, our recol- 
lection of the occasion with a rich sense of 
joy. Is it that we do not really desire the 
peace and joy of others? It would seem so. 
How many of us are not conscious of feeling 
extremely friendly and hopeful when our 
friend is in sorrow, or difficulty, or discredit, 
and yet of having no taste for standing by 
and applauding when our friend is joyful and 
successful ! There is nothing, it seems, that we 



Shyness 195 

can render to our friend in the latter case, ex- 
cept the praise of which he has already had 
enough ! 

It seems then that the process of anatomis- 
ing the nature and philosophy of shyness only 
ends in stripping off, one by one, as from an 
onion, the decent integuments of the human 
>spirit, and revealing it every moment more 
and more in its native rankness. Let me for- 
bear, consoling myself with the thought that 
the qualities of human beings are not meant to 
be taken up one by one, like coins from a tray, 
and scrutinised; but that what matters is the 
general effect, the blending, the grouping, the 
mellowed surface, the warped line. I was only 
yesterday in an old church, where I saw an 
ancient font-cover — a sort of carved extin- 
guisher — and some dark panels of a rood- 
screen. They had been, both cover and panels, 
coarsely and brightly painted and gilt; and, 
horrible to reflect, it flashed upon me that 
they must have once been both glaring and 
vulgar. Yet to-day the dim richness of the 
effect, the dints, the scaling-off of the flakes, 
the fading of the pigment, the dulling of the 
gold, were incomparable; and I began to won- 



196 At Large 

der if perhaps that was not what happened 
to us in life; and that though we foolishly 
regretted the tarnishing of the bright sur- 
faces of soul and body with our passions and 
tempers and awkwardnesses and feeblenesses, 
yet perhaps it was, after all, that we were 
taking on an unsuspected beauty, and making 
ourselves fit, some far-off day, for the Com- 
munion of Saints! 



IX 

Equality 

IT is often said that the Anglo-Saxon races 
suffer from a lack of ideals, that they do 
not hold enough things sacred. But there is 
assuredly one thing which the most elemen- 
tary and barbarous Anglo-Saxon holds sacred, 
beyond creed and Decalogue and fair play and 
morality, and that is property. At inquests, 
for instance, it may be noted how often in- 
quiries are solicitously made, not whether the 
deceased had religious difficulties or was dis- 
appointed in love, but whether he had any 
financial worries. We hold our own property 
to be very sacred indeed, and our respect for 
other men's rights in the matter is based on 
the fact that we wish our own rights to be 
respected. If I were asked what other ideals 
were held widely sacred in England and 
America I should find it very difficult to reply. 
I think that there is a good deal of interest 
197 



1 98 At Large 

taken in America in education and culture; 
whereas in England I do not believe that there 
is very much interest taken in either; almost 
the only thing which is valued in England, 
romantically, and with a kind of enthusiasm, 
besides property, is social distinction; the de- 
mocracy in England is sometimes said to be 
indignant at the existence of so much social 
privilege ; the word " class " is said to be ab- 
horrent to the democrat; but the only classes 
that he detests are the classes above him in the 
social scale, and the democrat is extremely in- 
dignant if he is assigned to a social station 
which he considers to be below his own. I 
have met democrats who despise and con- 
temn the social tradition of the so-called upper 
classes, but I have never met a democrat who 
is not much more infuriated if it is supposed 
that he has not social traditions of his own 
vastly superior to the social traditions of the 
lowest grade of precarious mendicity. The 
reason why socialism has never had any great 
hold in England is because equality is only a 
word, and in no sense a real sentiment in Eng- 
land. The reason why members of the lowest 
class in England are not as a rule convinced 



Equality 199 

socialists is because their one ambition is to 
become members of the middle-class, and to 
have property of their own; and while the 
sense of personal possession is so strong as it 
is, no socialism worthy of the name has a 
chance. It is possible for any intelligent, 
virtuous, and capable member of the lower 
class to transfer himself to the middle-class; 
and once there he does not favour any system 
of social equality. Socialism can never pre- 
vail as a political system, until we get a ma- 
jority of disinterested men, who do not 
want to purchase freedom from daily work by 
acquiring property, and who desire the respon- 
sibility rather than the influence of ad- 
ministrative office. But administrative office 
is looked upon in England as an important 
if indirect factor in acquiring status and per- 
sonal property for oneself and one's friends. 
I am myself a sincere believer in socialism; 
that is to say, I do not question the right of 
society to deprive me of my private property 
if it chooses to do so. It does choose to do so 
to a certain extent through the medium of the 
income-tax. Such property as I possess has, 
I think it as well to state, been entirely ac- 



200 At Large 

quired by my own exertions. I have never 
inherited a penny, or received any money ex- 
cept what I have earned. I am quite willing 
to admit that my work was more highly paid 
than it deserved; but I shall continue to cling 
tenaciously to it until I am convinced that it 
will be applied for the benefit of every one; 
I should not think it just if it was taken from 
me for the benefit of the idle and incompetent ; 
and I should be reluctant to part with it un- 
less I felt sure that it would pass into the 
hands of those who are as just-minded and 
disinterested as myself, and be fairly admin- 
istered. I should not think it just if it were 
taken from me by people who intended to mis- 
use it, as I have misused it, for their own 
personal gratification. 

It was made a matter of merriment in the 
case of William Morris that he preached the 
doctrines of socialism while he was a prosper- 
ous manufacturer; but I see that he was per- 
fectly consistent. There is no justice, for 
instance, about the principle of disarmament, 
unless all nations loyally disarm at the same 
time. A person cannot be called upon to strip 
himself of his personal property for disin- 



Equality 201 

terested reasons, if he feels that he is 
surrounded by people who would use the spoils 
for their own interest. The process must be 
carried out by a sincere majority, who may 
then coerce the selfish minority. I have no 
conception what I should do with my money 
if I determined that I ought not to possess it. 
It ought not to be applied to any public pur- 
pose, because under a socialist regime all 
public institutions would be supported by the 
public, and they ought not to depend upon 
private generosity. Still less do I think that 
it ought to be divided among individuals, be- 
cause, if they were disinterested persons, they 
ought to refuse to accept it. The only good 
reason I should have for disencumbering myself 
of my possessions would be that I might set 
a good example of the simple life, by working 
hard for a livelihood, which is exactly what I 
do; and my only misfortune is that my earn- 
ings and the interest of my accumulated earn- 
ings produce a sum which is far larger than 
the average man ought to possess. Thus the 
difficulty is a very real one. Moreover the evil 
of personal property is that it tends to em- 
phasise class-distinctions and to give the 



202 At Large 

possessors of it a sense of undue superiority. 
Now I am democratic enough to maintain that 
I have no sense whatever of personal superi- 
ority. I do not allow my possession of 
property to give me a life of vacuous amuse- 
ment, for the simple reason that my work 
amuses me far more than any other form of 
occupation. If it is asked why I tend to live 
by preference among what may be called 
my social equals, I reply that the only people 
one is at ease with are the people whose so- 
cial traditions are the same as one's own, for 
the simple reason that one does not then have 
to think about social traditions at all. I do 
not think my social traditions are better than 
the social traditions of any other stratum of 
society, whether it be described as above or 
below my own ; all I would say is that they are 
different from the social traditions of other 
strata, and I much prefer to live without hav- 
ing to consider such matters at all. The 
manners of the upper middle-class, to which 
scientifically I belong, are different from the 
manners of the upper, lower-middle, and lower 
class, and I feel out of my element in the 
upper class, just as I feel out of my element 



Equality 203 

in the lower class. Of course if I were per- 
fectly simple-minded and sincere, this would 
not be so; but, as it is, I am at ease with 
professional persons of my own standing; I 
understand their point-of-view without any 
need of explanation; in any class but my own, 
I am aware of the constant strain of trying 
to grasp another point of view; and to speak 
frankly, it is not worth the trouble. I do not 
at all desire to migrate out of my own class, 
and I have never been able to sympathise with 
people who did. The motive for doing so is 
not generally a good one, though it is of course 
possible to conceive a high-minded aristocrat 
who from motives based upon our common 
humanity might desire to apprehend the point 
of view of an artisan, or a high-minded artisan 
who from the same motive desired to apprehend 
the point of view of an earl. But one requires 
to feel sure that this is based upon a strong 
sense of charity and responsibility, and I can 
only say that I have not found that the desire 
to migrate into a different class is generally 
based upon these qualities. 

The question is, what ought a man who be- 
lieves sincerely in the principle of equality to 



204 At Large 

do in the matter, if he is situated as I am 
situated? What I admire and desire in life 
is friendly contact with my fellows, interest- 
ing work, leisure for following the pursuits I 
enjoy, such as art and literature. I honestly 
confess that I am not interested in what are 
called Social Problems, or rather I am not at 
all interested in the sort of people who study 
them. Such problems have hardly reached 
the vital stage; they are in the highly techni- 
cal stage, and are mixed up with such things 
as political economy, politics, organisation, 
and so forth, which, to be perfectly frank, are 
t(> me blighting and dreary objects of study. 
I honour profoundly the people who engage in 
such pursuits; but life is not long enough to 
take up work, however valuable, from a sense 
of duty, if one realises one's own unfitness for 
such labours. I wish with all my heart that 
all classes cared equally for the things which 
I love. I should like to be able to talk frankly 
and unaffectedly about books, and interesting 
people, and the beauties of nature, and ab- 
stract topics of a mild kind, with any one I 
happened to meet. But, as a rule, to speak 
frankly, I find that people of what I must call 



Equality 205 

the lower class are not interested in these 
things; people in what I will call the upper 
class are faintly interested, in a horrible and 
condescending way, in them — which is worse 
than no interest at all. A good many people in 
my own class are impatient of them, and think 
of them as harmless recreations; I fall back 
upon a few like-minded friends, with whom I 
can talk easily and unreservedly of such 
things, without being thought priggish or 
donnish or dilettanteish or unintelligible. 
The subjects in which I find the majority of 
people interested are personal gossip, money, 
success, business, politics. I love personal 
gossip, but that can only be enjoyed in a cir- 
cle well acquainted with each other's faults 
and foibles; and I do not sincerely care for 
talking about the other matters I have men- 
tioned. Hitherto I have always had a certain 
amount of educational responsibility, and that 
has furnished an abundance of material for 
pleasant talk and interesting thoughts; but 
then I have always suffered from the Anglo- 
Saxon failing of disliking responsibility ex- 
cept in the case of those for whom one's efforts 
are definitely pledged on strict business prin- 



2o6 At Large 

ciples. I cannot deliberately assume a sense 
of responsibility towards people in general; 
to do that implies a sense of the value of one's 
own influence and example, which I have 
never possessed; and, indeed, I have always 
heartily disliked the manifestation of it in 
others. Indeed, I firmly believe that the best 
and most fruitful part of a man's influence, 
is the influence of which he is wholly uncon- 
scious; and I am quite sure that no one who 
has a strong sense of responsibility to the 
world in general can advance the cause of 
equality, because such a sense implies at all 
events a consciousness of moral superiority. 
Moreover, my educational experience leads me 
to believe that one cannot do much to form 
character. The most one can do is to guard 
the young against pernicious influences, and 
do one's best to recommend one's own disin- 
terested enthusiasms. One cannot turn a vi- 
olet into a rose by any horticultural effort; 
one can only see that the violet or the rose has 
the best chance of what is horribly called 
eelf-effectuation. 

My own belief is that these great ideas like 
Equality and eJustice are things which, like 



Equality 207 

poetry, are born and cannot be made. That 
a number of earnest people should be think- 
ing about them shows that they are in the 
air; but the interest felt in them is the sign 
and not the cause of their increase. I believe 
that one must go forwards, trying to avoid 
anything that is consciously harsh or pomp- 
ous or selfish or base, and the great ideas will 
take care of themselves. 

The two great obvious difficulties which 
seem to me to lie at the root of all schemes for 
producing a system of social equality are first 
the radical inequality of character, tempera- 
ment, and equipment in human beings. No 
system can ever hope to be a practical system 
unless we can eliminate the possibility of 
children being born, some of them perfectly 
qualified for life and citizenship, and others 
hopelessly disqualified. If such differences 
were the result of environment it would be a 
remediable thing. But one can have a strong, 
vigorous, naturally temperate child born and 
brought up under the meanest and most sor- 
did conditions, and, on the other hand, a 
thoroughly worthless and detestable person 
may be the child of hi<T:h-minded, well-educated 



2o8 At Large 

people, with every social advantage. My work 
as a practical educationalist enforced this 
upon me. One would find a boy, born under 
circumstances as favourable for the produc- 
tion of virtue and energy as any socialistic 
system could provide, who was really only 
fitted for the lowest kind of mechanical work, 
and whose instincts were utterly gross. Even 
if the State could practise a kind of refined 
Mendelism, it would be impossible to guard 
against the influences of heredity. If one 
traces back the hereditary influences of a child 
for ten generations, it will be found that he 
has upwards of two thousand progenitors, 
any one of whom may give him a bias. 

And secondly, I cannot see that any system 
of socialism is consistent with the system of 
the family. The parents in a socialistic state 
can only be looked upon as brood stock, and 
the nurture of the rising generation must be 
committed to some State organisation, if one 
Is to secure an equality of environing influen- 
ces. Of course, this is done to a certain extent 
by the boarding-schools of the upper classes; 
and here again my experience has shown me 
that the system, though a good one for the 



Equality 209 

majority, is not the best system invariably for 
types with marked originality — the very type 
that one most desires to propagate. 

These are, of course, very crude and ele- 
mentary objections to the socialistic scheme; 
all that I say is that until these difficulties 
seem more capable of solution, I cannot throw 
myself with any interest into the speculation; 
I cannot continue in the path of logical de- 
duction, while the postulates and axioms 
remain so unsound. 

What then can a man who has resources 
that he cannot wisely dispose of, and happi- 
ness that he cannot impart to others, but yet 
who would only too gladly share his gladness 
with the world, do to advance the cause of the 
general weal? Must he plunge into activities 
for which he has no aptitude or inclination, 
and which have as their aim objects for which 
he does not think that the world is ripe? 
Every one will remember the figure of Mrs. 
Pardiggle in Bleak House, that raw-boned lady 
who enjoyed hard work, and did not know 
what it was to be tired, who went about 
rating inefficient people, and " boned " her 
children's pocket-money for charitable ob- 
14 



2IO At Large 

jects. It seems to me that many of the people 
who work at social reforms do so because, 
like Mrs. Pardiggle, they enjoy hard work and 
love ordering other people about. In a so- 
ciety wisely and rationally organised, there 
would be no room for Mrs. Pardiggle at all; 
the question is whether things must first pass 
through the Pardiggle stage? I do not in 
my heart believe it. Mrs. Pardiggle seems to 
me to be not part of the cure of the disease, 
but rather one of the ugliest of its symptoms. 
I think that she is on the wrong tack 
altogether, and leading other people astray. 
I do know some would-be social reformers, 
whom I respect and commiserate with all my 
heart, who see what is amiss, and have no idea 
how to mend it, and who lose themselves, like 
Hamlet, in a sort of hopeless melancholy about 
it all, with a deep-seated desire to give others 
a kind of happiness which they ought to de- 
sire, but which, as a matter of fact, they do 
not desire. Such men are often those upon 
whom early youth broke, like a fresh wave, 
with an incomparable sense of rapture, in the 
thought of all the beauty and loveliness of 
nature and art ; and who lived for a little in a 



Equality 211 

Paradise of delicious experiences and fine 
emotions, believing that there must be some 
strange mistake, and that every one must in 
reality desire what seemed so utterly desir- 
able; and then, as life went on, there fell upon 
these the shadow of the harsh facts of life ; the 
knowledge that the majority of the human 
race had no part or lot in such visions, but 
loved rather food and drink and comfort and 
money and rude mirth; who did not care a 
pin what happened to other people, or how 
frail and suffering beings spent their lives, 
so long as they themselves were healthy and 
jolly. Then that shadow deepens and thick- 
ens, until the sad dreamers do one of two 
things — either immure themselves in a tiny 
scented garden of their own, and try to drown 
the insistent noises without; or, on the other 
hand, if they are of the nobler sort, lose heart 
and hope, and even forfeit their own delight 
in things that are sweet and generous and 
pleasant and pure. A mournful and inextri- 
cable dilemma! 

Perhaps one or two of such visionaries, who 
are made of sterner stuff, have deliberately 
embarked, hopefully and courageously, upon 



212 At Large 

the Pardiggle path; they have tried absurd 
experiments, like Ruskin, in road-making and 
the formation of Guilds; thej have taken to 
journalism and committees like William Mor- 
ris. But they have been baffled. I do not 
mean to say that such lives of splendid re- 
nunciation may not have a deep moral effect; 
but, on the other hand, it is little gain to 
humanity if a richly-endowed spirit deserts 
a piece of work that he can do, to toil un- 
successfully at a piece of work that cannot 
yet be done at all. 

I myself believe that when Society is ca- 
pable of using property and the better plea- 
sures, it will arise and take them quietly and 
firmly: and as for the fine spirits who would 
try to organise things before they are even 
sorted, well, they have done a noble, ineffect- 
ual thing, because they could not do other- 
wise; and their desire to mend what is amiss 
is at all events a sign that the impulse is there, 
that the sun has brightened upon the peaks 
before it could warm the valleys. 

I was reading to-day The Irrational Knot, 
an early book by Mr. Bernard Shaw, whom I 
whole-heartedly admire because of his cour- 



Equality 213 

age and good-humour and energy. That book 
represents a type of the New Man, such as I 
suppose Mr. Shaw would have us all to be; 
the book, in spite of its radiant wit, is a mel- 
ancholy one, because the novelist penetrates 
so clearly past the disguises of humanity, 
and takes delight in dragging the mean, 
ugly, shuddering, naked creature into the 
open. The New Man himself is entirely 
vigorous, cheerful, affectionate, sensible, and 
robust. He is afraid of nothing and shocked 
by nothing. I think it would have been better 
if he had been a little more shocked, not in a 
conventional way, but at the hideous lapses 
and failures of even generous and frank peo- 
ple. He is too hard and confident to be an 
apostle. He does not lead the flock like a 
shepherd, but helps them along, like Father- 
o'-Flynn, with his stick. I would have gone 
to Conolly, the hero of the book, to get me out 
of a difficulty, but I could not have confided 
to him what I really held sacred. Moreover 
the view of money, as the one essential world- 
force, so frankly confessed in the book, puz- 
zled me. I do not think that money is ever 
more than a weapon in the hands of a man, 



214 At Large 

or a convenient screening wall, and the New 
Man ought to have neither weapons nor walls, 
except his vigour and serenity of spirit. 
Again the New Man is too fond of saying 
what he thinks, and doing what he chooses; 
and, in the new earth, that independent in- 
stinct will surely be tempered by a sense, 
every bit as instinctive, of the rights of other 
people. But I suppose Mr. Shaw's point is 
that if you cannot mend the world, you had 
better make it serve you, as in its folly and 
debility it will, if you bully it enough. I sup- 
pose that Mr. Shaw would say that the 
brutality of his hero is the shadow thrown on 
him by the vileness of the world, and that if 
we were all alike courageous and industri- 
ous and good-humoured, that shadow would 
disappear. 

And this, I suppose, is after all the secret; 
that the world is not going to be mended from 
[without, but is mending itself from within; 
and thus that the best kind of socialism is 
really the highest individualism, in which a 
man leaves legislation to follow and express, 
as it assuredly does, the growth of emotion, 
and sets himself, in his own corner, to be as 



Equality 215 

quiet and disinterested and kindly as he can, 
choosing what is honest and pure, and reject- 
ing what is base and vile; and this is after 
all the socialism of Christ; only we are all in 
such a hurry, and think it more effective to 
clap a ruffian into gaol than to suffer his 
violence — the result of which process is to 
make men sympathise with the ruffian — 
while, if we endure his violence, we touch a 
spring in the hearts of ruffian and spectators 
alike, which is more fruitful of good than the 
criminal's infuriated seclusion, and his just 
quarrel with the world. Of course the real 
way is that we should each of us abandon our 
own desires for private ease and convenience, 
in the light of the hope that those who come 
after will be easier and happier; whereas the 
Pardiggle reformer literally enjoys the pres- 
ence of the refuse, because his broom has 
something to sw^eep away. 

And the strangest thing of all is that we 
move forward, in a bewildered company, 
knowing that our every act and word is the 
resultant of ancient forces, not one of which 
we can change or modify in the least degree, 
while we live under the instinctive delusion, 



2i6 At Large 

which survives the severest logic, that we can 
always and at every moment do to a certain 
extent what we choose to do. What the truth 
is that connects and underlies these two 
phenomena, we have not the least conception; 
but meanwhile each remains perfectly obvious 
and apparently true. To myself, the logical 
belief is infinitely the more hopeful and sus- 
taining of the two; for if the movement of 
progress is in the hands of God, we are at all 
events taking our mysterious and wonderful 
part in a great dream that is being evolved, 
far more vast and amazing than we can com- 
prehend; whereas if I felt that it was left to 
ourselves to choose, and that, hampered as 
we feel ourselves to be by innumerable chains 
of circumstance, we could yet indeed originate 
action and impede the underlying Will, I 
should relapse into despair before a problem 
full of sickening complexities and admitted 
failures. Meanwhile, I do what I am given 
to do; I perceive what I am allowed to per- 
ceive; I suffer what is appointed for me to 
suffer; but all with a hope that I may yet see 
the dawn break upon the sunlit sea, beyond 
the dark hills of time. 



The Dramatic Sense 

THE other day I was walking along a road 
at Cambridge, engulfed in a torrent of 
cloth-capped and coated young men all flow- 
ing one way — going to see or, as it is now 
called, to " watch " a match. We met a little 
girl walking with her governess in the oppo- 
site direction. There was a baleful light of 
intellect in the child's eye, and a preponder- 
ance of forehead combined with a certain 
lankness of hair betrayed, I fancy, an ingenu- 
ous academical origin. The girl was looking 
round her with an unholy sense of superior- 
ity, and as we passed she said to her governess 
in a clear-cut, complacent tone, " We 're quite 
exceptional, aren't we?" To which the 
governess replied briskly, " Laura, don't be 
ridiculous ! " To which exhortation Laura 
replied with self-satisfied pertinacity, *^ No, 
but we are exceptional, aren't we?" 
217 



2i8 At Large 

Ah, Miss Laura, I thought to myself, you 
are one of those people with a dramatic sense 
of your own importance. It will probably 
make jou a very happy, and an absolutely in- 
sufferable person! I have little doubt that 
the tiny prig was saying to herself, " I dare- 
say that all these men are wondering who is 
the clever-looking little girl who is walking 
in the opposite direction to the match, and 
has probably something better to do than 
look on at matches." It is a great question 
whether one ought to wish people to nourish 
illusions about themselves, or whether one 
ought to desire such illusions to be dispelled. 
They certainly add immensely to people's hap- 
piness, but on the other hand, if life is an 
educative progress, and if the aim of human 
beings is or ought to be the attainment of 
moral perfection, then the sooner that these 
illusions are dispelled the better. It is one of 
the many questions which depend upon the 
great fact as to whether our identity is 
prolonged after death. If identity is not pro- 
longed, then one would wish people to main- 
tain every illusion which makes life happier; 
and there is certainly no illusion which brings 



The Dramatic Sense 219 

people such supreme and unfailing content- 
ment as the sense of their own significance in 
the world. This illusion rises superior to all 
failures and disappointments. It makes the 
smallest and simplest act seem momentous. 
The world for such persons is merely a theatre 
of gazers in which they discharge their part 
appropriately and successfully. I know sev- 
eral people who have the sense very strongly, 
who are conscious from morning to night, in 
all that they do or say, of an admiring audi- 
ence; and who, even if their circle is wholly 
indifferent, find food for delight in the con- 
sciousness of how skilfully and satisfactorily 
they discharge their duties. I remember once 
hearing a worthy clergyman, of no particular 
force, begin a speech at a missionary meeting 
by saying that people had often asked him 
what was the secret of his smile; and that he 
had always replied that he was unaware that 
his smile had any special quality; but that if 
it indeed was so — and it would be idle to pre- 
tend that a good many people had not noticed 
it — it w^as that he imported a resolute cheer- 
fulness into all that he did. The man, as I 
have said, was not in any way distinguished. 



220 At Large 

but there can be no doubt that the thought of 
his heavenly smile was a very sustaining one, 
and that the sense of responsibility that the 
possession of such a characteristic gave him, 
undoubtedly made him endeavour to smile like 
the Cheshire Cat, when he did not feel par- 
ticularly cheerful. 

It is not, however, common to find people 
make such a frank and candid confession of 
their superiority. The feeling is generally 
kept for more or less private consumption. 
The underlying self-satisfaction generally 
manifests itself, for instance, with people who 
have no real illusions, say, about their per- 
sonal appearance, in leading them to feel, after 
a chance glance at themselves in a mirror, 
that they really do not look so bad in certain 
lights. A dull preacher will repeat to him- 
self, with a private relish, a sentence out of a 
very commonplace discourse of his own, and 
think that that was really an original thought, 
and that he gave it an impressive emphasis; 
or a student will make a very unimportant 
discovery, press it upon the attention of some 
great authority on the subject, extort a half- 
hearted assent, and will then go about saying, 



The Dramatic Sense 221 

" I mentioned my discovery to Professor 

A ; he was quite excited about it, and 

urged the immediate publication of it." Or 
a commonplace woman will give a tea-party, 
and plume herself upon the eclat with which 
it went off. The materials are ready to hand 
in any life; the quality is not the same as 
priggishnesSj though it is closely akin to it; 
it no doubt exists in the minds of many really 
successful people, and if it is not flagrantly 
betrayed, it is often an important constituent 
of their success. But the happy part of it is 
that the dramatic sense is often freely be- 
stowed upon the most inconspicuous and un- 
intelligent persons, and fills their lives with a 
consciousness of romance and joy. It con- 
cerns itself mostly with public appearances, 
upon however minute a scale, and thus it is 
a rich source of consolation and self-congratu- 
lation. Even if it falls upon one who has no 
social gifts whatever, whose circle of friends 
tends to diminish as life goes on, whose in- 
vitations tend to decrease, it still frequently 
survives in a consciousness of being pro- 
foundly interesting, and consoles itself by 
believing that under different circumstances 



222 At Large 

and in a more perceptive society the fact 
would have received a wider recognition. 

But, after all, as with many things, much 
depends upon the way that illusions are cher- 
ished. When this dramatic sense is bestowed 
upon a heavy-handed, imperceptive, egotisti- 
cal person, it becomes a terrible affliction to 
other people, unless indeed the onlooker pos- 
sesses the humorous spectatorial curiosity; 
when it becomes a matter of delight to find 
a person behaving characteristically, striking 
the hour punctually, and being, as Mr. Ben- 
net thought of Mr. Collins, fully as absurd as 
one had hoped. It then becomes a pleasure, 
and not necessarily an unkind one, because it 
gives the deepest satisfaction to the victim, 
to tickle the egotist as one might tickle a 
trout, to draw him on by innocent questions, 
to induce him to unfold and wave his flag high 
in the air. I had once a worthy acquaintance 
whose occasional visits were to me a source of 
infinite pleasure — and I may add that I have 
no doubt that they gave him a pleasure quite 
as acute — ^because he only required the 
simplest fly to be dropped on the pool, when 
he came heavily to the top and swallowed it. 



The Dramatic Sense 223 

I have heard him deplore the vast size of his 
correspondence, the endless claims made upon 
him for counsel. I have heard him say with 
a fatuous smile that there were literally 
hundreds of people who day by day brought 
their pitcher of self-pity to be filled at his 
pump of sympathy: that he wished he could 
have a little rest, but that he supposed that it 
was a plain duty for him to minister thus to 
human needs, though it 'took it out of him 
terribly. I suppose that some sort of experi- 
ence must have lain behind this confession, for 
my friend was a decidedly moral man and 
would not tell a deliberate untruth; the only 
difficulty was that I could not conceive where 
he kept his stores of sympathy, because I had 
never heard him speak of any subject except 
himself, and I suppose that his method of 
consolation, if he was consulted, was to relate 
some striking instance out of his own experi- 
ence in which grace triumphed over nature. 

Sometimes, again, the dramatic sense takes 
the form of an exaggerated self-depreciation. 
I was reading the other day the life of a very 
devoted clergyman, who said on his death-bed 
to one standing by him, " If anything is done 



224 At Large 

in memory of me, let a plain slab be placed on 
my grave with my initials and the date, and 
the words, ' The unworthy priest of this par- 
ish '-—that must be all." 

The man's modesty was absolutely sincere; 
yet what a strange confusion of modesty and 
vanity after all! If the humility had been 
perfectly unaffected, he would have felt that 
the man who really merited such a description 
deserved no memorial at all; or again, if he 
had had no sense of credit, he would have left 
the choice of a memorial to any who might 
wish to commemorate him. If one analyses 
the feeling underneath the words, it will be 
seen to consist of a desire to be remembered, 
a hope almost amounting to a belief that his 
work was worthy of commemoration, coupled 
with a sincere desire not to exaggerate its 
value. And yet silence would have attested 
his humility far more effectually than any 
calculated speech! 

The dramatic sense is not a thing which 
necessarily increases as life goes on; some 
people have it from the very beginning. I 
have an elderly friend who is engaged on a 
very special sort of scientific research of a 



The Dramatic Sense 225 

wholly unimportant kind. He is just as in- 
capable as my sympathetic friend of talking 
about anything except his own interests. 
^' You don't mind my speaking about my 
work?" he says with a brilliant smile; "you 
see it means so much to me." And then, after 
explaining some highly technical detail, he 
will add : " Of course this seems to you very 
minute, but it is work that has got to be done 
by some one; it is only laying a little stone in 
the temple of science. Of course I often feel 
I should like to spread my wings and take a 
wider flight, but I do seem to have a special 
faculty for this kind of work, and I suppose 
it is my duty to stick to it." And he will pass 
his hand wearily over his brow, and expound 
another technical detail. He apologises cease- 
lessly for dwelling on his own work; but 
in no place or company have I ever heard him 
do otherwise; and he is certainly one of the 
happiest people I know. 

But, on the other hand, it is a rather charm- 
ing quality to find in combination with a 
certain balance of mind. Unless a man is 
interesting to himself he cannot easily be in- 
teresting to others; there is a youthful and 

IS 



226 At Large 

ingenuous sense of romance and drama which 
can exist side by side with both modesty and 
sympathy, somewhat akin to the habit common 
to imaginative children of telling themselves 
long stories in which they are the heroes of 
the tale. But people who have this faculty 
are generally mildly ashamed of it; they do 
not believe that their fantastic adventures are 
likely to happen. They only think how pleas- 
ant it would be if things arranged themselves 
so. It all depends whether such dramatisa- 
tion is looked upon in the light of an 
amusement, or whether it is applied in a heavy- 
handed manner to real life. Imaginative 
children, who have true sympathy and affec- 
tion as well, generally end by finding the real 
world, as they grow up into it, such an aston- 
ishing and interesting place, that their hori- 
zon extends, and they apply to other people, 
to their relationships and ^neetings, the zest 
and interest that they formerly applied only 
to themselves. The kind of temperament that 
fall's a helpless victim to dramatic egotism is 
generally the priggish and self-satisfied man, 
who has a fervent belief in his own influence, 
and the duty of exercising it on others. 



The Dramatic Sense 227 

Most of uSj one may say gratefully, are kept 
humble by our failures and even by our sins. 
If the path of the transoressor is hard, the 
path of the righteous man is often harder. If 
a man is born free from grosser temptations, 
vigorous, active, robust, the chances are ten" to 
one that he falls into the snare of self-right- 
eousness and moral complacency. He passes 
judgment on others, he compares himself 
favourably with them. A spice of unpopular- 
ity gives him a still more fatal bias, because 
he thinks that he is persecuted for his good- 
ness, when he is only disliked for his superi- 
iority. He becomes content to warn people, 
and if they reject his advice and get into dif- 
ficulties, he is not wholly ill-pleased. Whereas 
the diffident person who tremblingly assumes 
the responsibility for someone else's life, is 
beset by miserable regrets if his" penitent es- 
capes him, and attributes it to his own mis- 
management. The truth is that moral 
indignation is a luxury that very few people 
can afford to indulge in. And if it is true that 
a rich man can with difficulty enter the king- 
dom of heaven, it i^s also true that the dramatic 
man finds it still more difficult. He is im- 



228 At Large 

pervious to criticism, because he bears it with 
meekness. He has so good a conscience that 
he cannot believe himself in the wrong. If he 
makes an egregious blunder^ he says to him- 
self with infinite solemnity that it is right 
that his self-satisfaction should be tenderly 
purged away, and glories in his own humility. 
A far wholesomer frame of mind is that of 
the philosopher who said, when complimented 
on the mellowness that advancing years had 
brought him, that he still reserved to himself 
the right of damning things in general. Be- 
cause the truth is that the things which really 
discipline us are the painful, dreary, intoler- 
able things of life, the results of one's own 
meanness, stupidity, and weakness, or the 
black catastrophes which sometimes over- 
whelm us, and not the things which we piously 
and cheerfully accept as ministering to our 
consciousness of worth and virtue. 

If I say that the dramatic failing is apt to 
be more common among the clergy than among 
ordinary mortals, it is because the clerical 
vocation is one that tempts men who have this 
temperament strongly developed to enter it, 
and afterwards provides a good deal of sus- 



The Dramatic Sense 229 

tenance to the particular form of vanity that 
lies behind the temptation. The dramatic 
sense loves public appearances and trappings, 
processions and ceremonies. The instinctive 
dramatist, who is also a clergyman, tends to 
think of himself as moving to his place in the 
sanctuary in a solemn progress, with a worn 
spiritual aspect, robed as a son of Aaron. 
He likes to picture himself as standing in the 
pulpit pale with emotion, his eye gathering 
fire as he bears witness to the truth or testi- 
fies against sin. He likes to believe that his 
words and intonations have a thrilling quality, 
a fire or a delicacy, as the case may be, which 
scorch or penetrate the sin-burdened heart. 
It may be thought that this criticism is un- 
duly severe; I do not for a moment say that 
the attitude is universal, but it is commoner, 
I am sure, than one would like to believe; and 
neither do I say that it is inconsistent with 
deep earnestness and vital seriousness. I 
would go further, and maintain that such a 
dramatic consciousness is a valuable quality 
for men who have to sustain at all a spectacu- 
lar part. It very often lends impressiveness 
to a man, and convinces those who hear and 



230 At Large 



see him of his sincerity; while a man who 
thinks nothing of appearances often fails to 
convince his audience that he cares more for 
his message than for the fact that he is the 
mouthpiece of it. I find it very difflcult to 
say whether it is well for people who cherish 
such illusions about their personal impressive- 
ness to get rid of such illusions, when per- 
sonal impressiveness is a real factor in their 
success. To do a thing really well it is essen- 
tial to have a substantial confidence in one's 
aptitude for the task. And undoubtedly dif- 
fidence and humilityj however sincere, are a 
bad outfit for a man in a public position. I 
am inclined to think that self-confidence, and 
a certain degree of self-satisfaction, are valu- 
able assets, so long as a man believes primarily 
in the importance of what he has to say and 
do, and only secondarily in his own power of, 
and fitness for, saying and doing it. 

There is an interesting story^I do not 
vouch for the truth of it — that used to be told 
of Cardinal Manning, who undoubtedly had 
a strong sense of dramatic effect. He was 
putting on his robes one evening in the sacristy 
of the cathedral at Westminster, when a 



The Dramatic Sense 231 

noise was heard at the door, as of one who was 
determined on forcing an entrance in spite of 
the remonstrances of the attendants. In a 
moment a big, strongly-built person, looking 
like a prosperous man of business, labouring 
under a vehement and passionate emotion, 
came quickly in, looked about him, and ad- 
vancing to Manning, poured out a series of in- 
dignant reproaches. " You have got hold of 
my boy," he said, ^' with your hypocritical and 
sneaking methods; you have made him a Ro- 
man Catholic; you have ruined the happiness 
and peace of our home; you have broken his 
mother's heart, and overwhelmed us in mis- 
ery." He went on in this strain at some 
length. Manning, who was standing in his 
cassock, drew himself up in an attitude of 
majestic dignity, and waited until the in- 
truder's eloquence had exhausted itself, and 
had ended with threatening gestures. Some of 
those present would have intervened, but Man- 
ning with an air of command waved them back, 
and then, pointing his hand at the man, he 
said : " Now, sir, I have allowed you to have 
your say, and you shall hear me in reply. You 
have traduced Holy Church, you have broken 



232 At Large 

in upon the Sanctuary, you have uttered vile 
and abominable slanders against the Faith; 
and I tell you," he added, pausing for an in- 
stant with flashing eyes and marble visage, 
^' I tell you that within three months you will 
be a Catholic yourself." He then turned 
sharply on his heel and went on with his pre- 
parations. The man was utterly discomfited; 
he made as though he would speakj but was 
unable to find words; he looked round, and 
eventually slunk out of the sacristy in silence. 

One of those present ventured to ask Man- 
ning afterwards about the strange scene. 
" Had the Cardinal," he inquired, " any sud- 
den premonition that the man himself would 
adopt the Faith in so short a time?" Man- 
ning smiled indulgently, putting his hand on 
the other's shoulder, and said : " Ah, my dear 
friend, who shall say? You see, it was a very 
awkward moment, and I had to deal with the 
situation as I best could." 

That was an instance of supreme presence 
of mind and great dramatic force; but one is 
not sure whether it was a wholly apostolical 
method of handling the position. 

But to transfer the question from the eccle- 



The Dramatic Sense 233 

siastical region into the region of common life, 
it is undoubtedly true that if a man or a wo- 
man has a strong sense of moral issues, a deep 
feeling of responsibility and sympathy, an 
anxious desire to help things forward, then a 
dramatic sense of the value of manner, speech, 
gesture, and demeanour is a highly effective 
instrument. It is often said that people who 
wield a great personal influence have the gift 
of making the individual with whom they are 
dealing feel that his case is the most interest- 
ing and important with which they have ever 
come in contact, and of inspiring and main- 
taining a special kind of relationship between 
themselves and their petitioner. That is no 
doubt a very encouraging thing for the appli- 
cant to feel, even though he is sensible enough 
to realise that his case is only one among 
many with which his adviser is dealing, and 
probably not the most significant. Upon such 
a quality as this the success of statesmen, 
lawyers, physicians, largely depends. But 
where the dramatic sense is combined with 
egotism, selfishness, and indifference to the 
claims of others, it is a terrible inheritance. 
It ministers, as I have said before, to its pos- 



234 At Large 

sessor's self-satisfaction; but on the other 
hand it is a failing which goes so deep and 
:which permeates so intimately the whole 
moral nature, that its cure is almost impos- 
sible without the gift of what the Scripture 
calls " a new heart." Such self-complacency 
is a fearful shield against criticism, and par- 
ticularly so because it gives as a rule so few 
opportunities for any outside person, however 
intimate, to expose the obliquity of such a 
temperament. The dramatic egotist is care- 
ful as a rule not to let his egotism appear, 
but to profess to be, and even to believe that 
he is, guided by the highest motives in all 
his actions and words. A candid remon- 
strance is met by a calm tolerance, and by the 
reply that the critic does not understand the 
situation, and is trying to hinder rather 
than to help the development of beneficent 
designs. 

I used to know a man of this type, who was 
insatiably greedy of influence and recognition. 
It is true that he was ready to help other peo- 
ple with money or advice. He was wealthy, 
and of a good position; and he would take a 
great deal of trouble to obtain appointments 



The Dramatic Sense 235 

for friends who appealed to him, or to unravel 
a difficult situation; though the object of his 
diligence was not to help his applicants, but 
to obtain credit and power for himself. He 
did not desire that they should be helped, but 
that they should depend upon him for help. 
Nothing could undeceive him as to his own 
motive, because he gave his time and his 
money freely; yet the result was that most of 
the people whom he helped tended to resent 
it in the end, because he demanded services in 
return, and was jealous of any other interfer- 
ence. Chateaubriand says that it is not true 
gratitude to wish to repay favours promptly; 
and still less is it true benevolence to wish to 
retain a hold over those whom one has 
benefited. 

Sometimes indeed the two strains are al- 
most inextricably intertwined, real and vital 
sympathy with others, combined with an over- 
whelming sense of personal significance; and 
then the problem is an inconceivably compli- 
cated one. For I suppose it must be frankly 
confessed that the basis of the dramatic sense 
is not a very wholesome one; it is, of course, 
a strong form of individualism. But while it 



236 At Large 

is true that we suffer from taking ourselves 
too seriously, it is also possible to suffer from 
not taking ourselves seriously enough. If 
effectiveness is the end of life, there is no ques- 
tion that a strong sense of what we like to 
call responsibility, which is generally nothing 
more than a sense of one's own importance, 
decorously framed and glazed, is an immense 
factor in success. I myself cherish the heresy 
that effectiveness is very far from being the 
end of life, and that the only effectiveness 
that is worth anything is unintentional effec- 
tiveness. I believe that a man or woman who 
is humble and sincere, who loves and is loved, 
is higher on the steps of heaven than the 
adroitest lobbyist; but it may be that the 
world's criterion of what it admires and re- 
spects is the right one; and indeed it is hard 
to see how so strong an instinct is implanted 
in the human race, the instinct to value 
strength and success above everything, unless 
it is put there by our Maker. At the same 
time one cherishes the hope that there is a 
better criterion somewhere, in the Divine 
Mind, in the fruitful future, the criterion that 
it is not what a man actually effects that mat- 



The Dramatic Sense 237 

ters, but what he makes of the resources that 
are given him to work with. 

The effectiveness of the dramatic sense is 
beyond question. One can see a supreme in- 
stance of it in the case of the Christian Sci- 
ence movement, in which a woman of strong 
personality, by lighting upon an idea latent 
in a large number of minds, an idea moreover 
of real and practical vitality, and by putting 
it in a form which has all the definiteness re- 
quired by brains of a hazy and emotional 
order, has contrived to effect an immense 
amount of good, besides amassing a colossal 
fortune, and assuming almost Divine preten- 
sions, without being widely discredited. The 
human race is, speaking generally, so anxious 
for any leading that it can get, that if a man 
or woman can persuade themselves that they 
have a mission to humanity, and maintain a 
pontifical air, they will generally be able to 
attract a band of devoted adherents, whose 
faith, rising superior to both intelligence and 
common-sense, will indorse almost any claim 
that the prophet or prophetess likes to 
advance. 

But the danger for the prophet himself is 



238 At Large 

great. Arrogance, complacency, self-confi- 
dence, all the Pharisaical vices, flourish 
briskly in such a soil. He loses all sense of 
proportion, all sense of dependence. Instead 
of being a humble learner in a mysterious 
world, he expects to find everything made after 
the pattern revealed to him in the Mount. 
The good that he does may be permanent and 
fruitful; but in some dark valley of humilia- 
tion and despair he will have to learn that 
God tolerates us and uses us; He does not 
need us. " He delighteth not in any man's 
legs," as the Psalmist said with homely vig- 
our. To save others and be oneself a castaway 
is the terrible fate of which St. Paul saw so 
clearly the possibility; and thus any one who 
is conscious of the dramatic sense, or even 
dimly suspects that it is there, ought to pray 
very humbly to be delivered from it, as he 
would from any other darling bosom-sin. He 
ought to eschew diplomacy and practise frank- 
ness, he ought to welcome failure and to re- 
joice when he makes humiliating mistakes. 
He ought to be grateful even for palpable 
faults and weaknesses and sins and physical 
disabilities. For if we have the hope that 



The Dramatic Sense 239 

God is educating us, is moulding a fair statue 
out of the frail and sordid clay, such a faith 
forbids us to reject any experience, however 
disagreeable, however painful, however self- 
revealing it may be, as of no import; and thus 
we can grow into a truer sense of proportion, 
till at last we may come 

"to learn that Man 
Is small, and not forget that Man is great." 



XI 
Kelmscott and William Morris 

I HAD been at Fairford that still, fresh, 
April morning, and had enjoyed the sunny 
little piazza, with its pretty characteristic 
varieties of pleasant stone-built houses, solid 
Georgian fronts interspersed with mullioned 
gables. But the church ! That is a marvel- 
lous place; its massive lantern-tower, with 
solid, softly moulded outlines — for the sandy 
oolite admits little fineness of detail — all 
weathered to a beautiful orange-grey tint, has 
a mild dignity of its own. Inside it is a trea- 
sure of medisevalism. The screens, the wood- 
work, the monuments, all rich, dignified, and 
spacious. And the glass! Next to King's Col- 
lege Chapel, I suppose, it is the noblest series of 
windows in England, and the colour of it is in- 
comparable. Azure and crimson, green and 
orange, yet all with a firm economy of effect, 
the robes of the saints set and imbedded in a 
240 



Kelmscott and William Morris 241 

fine intricacy of white tabernacle-work. As 
to the design, I hardly knew whether to smile 
or weep. The splendid, ugly faces of the 
saints, depicted, whether designedly or art- 
lessly I cannot guess, as men of simple pas- 
sions and homely experience, moved me greatly, 
so unlike the mild, polite, porcelain visages of 
even the best modern glass. But the windows 
are as thick with demons as a hive with bees; 
and oh! the irresponsible levity displayed in 
these merry, grotesque, long-nosed creatures, 
some flame-coloured and long-tailedj some 
green and scaly, some plated like the arma- 
dillo, all going about their merciless work 
with infinite gusto and glee ! Here one picked 
at the white breast of a languid, tortured wo- 
man who lay bathed in flame; one with a 
glowing hook thrust a lamentable big- 
paunched wretch down into a bath of molten 
liquor; one with pleased intentness turned the 
handle of a churn, from the top of which pro- 
truded the head of a fair-haired boy, all dis- 
torted with pain and terror. What could 
have been in the mind of the designer of these 
hateful scenes? It is impossible to acquit 
him of a strong sense of the humorous. Did 

16 



242 At Large 

he believe that such things were actually in 
progress in some infernal cavern, seven times 
heated ? I fear it may have been so. And what 
of the effect upon the minds of the village folk 
who saw them day by day? It would have 
depressed, one would think, an imaginative 
girl or boy into madness, to dream of such 
things as being countenanced by God for the 
heathen and the unbaptised, as well as for the 
cruel and sinful. If the vile work had been 
represented as being done by cloudy, sombre, 
relentless creatures, it would have been more 
tolerable. But these fantastic imps, as lively 
as grigs and full to the brim of wicked laugh- 
ter, are certainly enjoying themselves with an 
extremity of delight of which no trace is to be 
seen in the mournful and heavily lined faces 
of the faithful. Autres temps ^ autres mceurs! 
Perhaps the simple, coarse mental palates of 
the village folk were none the worse for this 
realistic treatment of sin. One wonders what 
the saintly and refined Keble, who spent many 
years of his life as his father's curate here, 
thought of it all. Probably his submissive 
and deferential mind accepted it as in some 
ecclesiastical sense svmbolical of the merci- 



Kelmscott and William Morris 243 

less hatred of God for the desperate corrup- 
tion of humanity. It gave me little pleasure 
to connect the personality of Keble with the 
place, patient, sweet-natured, mystical, ser- 
viceable as he was. It seems hard to breathe 
in the austere air of a mind like Keble's, where 
the wind of the spirit blows chill down the 
narrow path, fenced in by the high, uncom- 
promising walls of ecclesiastical tradition on 
the one hand and stern Puritanism on the 
other. An artificial type, one is tempted to 
say! — and yet one ought never, I suppose, so 
to describe any flower that has blossomed 
fragrantly upon the human stock; any system 
that seems to extend a natural and instinctive 
appeal to certain definite classes of human 
temperament. 

I sped pleasantly enough along the low, rich 
pastures, thick with hedgerow elms, to Lech- 
lade, another pretty town with an infinite 
variety of habitations. Here again is a fine 
ancient church with a comely spire, " a pretty 
pyramis of stone," as the old Itinerary says, 
overlooking a charming gabled house, among 
walled and terraced gardens, with stone balls 
on the corner-posts and a quaint pavilion, the 



244 At Large 



river running below; and so on to a bridge 
over the jet slender Thames, where the river 
water spouted clear and fragrant into a wide 
pool; and across the flat meadows, bright 
with kingcups, the spire of Lechlade tow- 
ered over the clustered house-roofs to the 
west. 

Then further still by a lonely ill-laid road. 
And thus, with a mind pleasantly attuned to 
beauty and a quickening pulse, I drew near to 
Kelmscott. The great alluvial flat, broaden- 
ing on either hand, with low wooded heights, 
*' not ill-designed," as Morris said, to the 
south. Then came a winding cross-track, and 
presently I drew near to a straggling village, 
every house of which had some charm and 
quality of style, with here and there a high 
gabled dovecot, and its wooden cupola, stand- 
ing up among solid barns and stacks. Here 
was a tiny and inconspicuous church, with a 
small stone belfry; and then the road pushed 
on, to die away among the fields. But there, 
at the very end of the village, stood the house 
of which we were in search; and it was with 
a touch of awe, with a quickening heart, that 
I drew near to a place of such sweet and gra- 



Kelmscott and William Morris 245 

cious memories, a place so dear to more than 
one of the heroes of art. 

One comes to the goal of an artistic pilgrim- 
age with a certain sacred terror; either the 
place is disappointing, or it is utterly unlike 
what one anticipates. I knew Kelmscott so 
well from Rossetti's letters, from Morris's own 
splendid and loving description, from pic- 
tures, from the tales of other pilgrims, that I 
felt I could not be disappointed; and I was 
not. It was not only just like what I had 
pictured it to be, but it had a delicate and 
natural grace of its own as well. The house 
was larger and more beautiful, the garden 
smaller and not less beautiful, than I had 
imagined. I had not thought it was so shy, 
so rustic a place. It is very difficult to get 
any clear view of the manor. By the road are 
cottages, and a big building, half storehouse, 
half wheelwright's shop, to serve the homely 
needs of the farm. Through the open door 
one could see a bench with tools; and planks, 
staves, spokes, waggon-tilts, faggots, were all 
stacked in a pleasant confusion. Then came 
a walled kitchen-garden, with some big 
shrubs, bay and laurestinus, rising plumply 



246 At Large 

within; beyond which the grey house, spread 
thin with plaster, held up its gables and chim- 
neys over a stone-tiled roof. To the left, big 
barns and byres — a farm-man leading in a 
young bull with a pole at the nose-ring; be- 
yond that, open fields, with a dyke and a 
flood-wall of earth, grown over with nettles, 
withered sedges in the watercourse, and elms 
in which the rooks were clamorously building. 
We met with the ready, simple Berkshire 
courtesy; we were referred to a gardener who 
was in charge. To speak with him, we walked 
round to the other side of the house, to an 
open space of grass, where the fowls picked 
merrily, and the old farm-lumber, broken 
coops, disused ploughs, lay comfortably about. 
"How I love tidiness!" wrote Morris once. 
Yet I did not feel that he would have done 
other than love all this natural and simple 
litter of the busy farmstead. 

Here the venerable house appeared more 
stately still. Through an open door in a wall 
we caught a sight of the old standards of an 
orchard, and borders with the spikes of spring- 
flowers pushing through the mould. The 
gardener was digging in the gravelly soil. He 



Kelmscott and William Morris 247 

received us with a grave and kindly air; but 
when we asked if we could look into the house, 
he said, with a sturdy faithfulness, that his 
orders were that no one should see it, and 
continued his digging without heeding us 
further. 

Somewhat abashed we retraced our steps; 
we got one glimpse of the fine indented front, 
with its shapely wings and projections. I 
should like to have seen the great parlour, and 
the tapestry-room with the story of Samson 
that bothered Rossetti so over his work. I 
should like to have seen the big oak bed, with 
its hangings embroidered with one of Morris's 
sweetest lyrics: 

The wind 's on the wold, 
And the night is a-cold. 

I should like to have seen the tapestry-chamber, 
and the room where Morris, who so frankly 
relished the healthy savour of meat and drink, 
ate his joyful meals, and the peacock yew-tree 
that he found in his days of failing strength 
too hard a task to clip. I should like to have 
seen all this, I say; and yet I am not sure 
that tables and chairs, upholsteries and pic- 



248 At Large 

tures, would not have come in between me and 
the sacred spirit of the place. 

So I turned to the church. Plain and 
homely as its exterior is, inside it is touched 
with the true mediaeval spirit, like the " old 
febel chapel " of the Mort d' Arthur. Its 
bare walls, its half-obliterated frescoes, its 
sturdy pillars, gave it an ancient, simple air. 
But I did not, to my grief, see the grave of 
Morris, though I saw in fancy the coffin 
brought from Lechlade in the bright farm- 
waggon, on that day of pitiless rain. For 
there was going on in the churchyard the only 
thing I saw that day that seemed to me to 
strike a false note; a silly posing of village 
girls, self-conscious and overdressed, before 
the camera of a photographer — a playing at 
aesthetics, bringing into the village life a touch 
of unwholesome vanity and the vulgar affecta- 
tion of the world. That is the ugly shadow 
of fame; it makes conventional people curious 
about the details of a great man's life and sur- 
roundings, without initiating them into any 
sympathy with his ideals and motives. The 
price that the real worshippers pay for their 
inspiration is the slavering idolatry of the 



Kelmscott and William Morris 249 

unintelligent; and I withdrew in a mournful 
wonder from the place, wishing I could set an 
invisible fence round the scene, a fence which 
none should pass but the few who had the 
secret and the key in their hearts. 

And here, for the pleasure of copying the 
sweet words, let me transcribe a few sentences 
from Morris's own description of the house 
itself: 

A house that I love with a reasonable love, I 
think; for though my words may give you no idea 
of any special charm about it, yet I assure you 
that the charm is there; so much has the old house 
grown up out of the soil and the lives of those that 
lived on it: some thin thread of tradition, a half- 
anxious sense of the delight of meadow and acre 
and wood and river; a certain amount (not too 
much, let us hope) of common-sense, a liking for 
making materials serve one's turn, and perhaps at 
bottom some little grain of sentiment — this, I think, 
was what went to the making of the old house. 

And again: 

My feet moved along the road they knew. The 
raised way led us into a little field, bounded by a 
backwater of the river on one side; on the right 
hand we could see a cluster of small houses and 
barns, and before us a grey stone barn and a wall 
partly overgrown with ivy, over which a few grey 
gables showed. The village road ended in the shal- 
low of the backwater. We crossed the road, and 



250 At Large 



my hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and 
we stood presently on a stone path which led up 
to the old house. The garden between the wall and 
the house was redolent of the June flowers, and 
the roses were rolling over one another with that 
delicious superabundance of small well-tended gar- 
dens which at first sight takes away all thought save 
that of beauty. The blackbirds were singing their 
loudest, the doves were cooing on the roof -ridge, the 
rooks in the high elm-trees beyond were garrulous 
among the young leaves, and the swifts wheeled 
v^'hirring about the gables. And the house itself 
was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart 
of summer. 

me! me! How I love the earth, and the sea- 
sons, and weather, and all things that deal with it, 
and all that grows out of it — as this has done! 
The earth and the growth of it and the life of it! 
If I could but say or show how I love it! 

The pure lyrical beauty of this passage 
makes one out of conceit with one's own 
clumsy sentences. But still, I will say how 
all that afternoon, among the quiet fields, 
with the white clouds rolling up over the lip 
of the wolds, I was haunted with the thought 
of that burly figure; the great head with its 
curly hair and beard; the eyes that seemed so 
guarded and unobservant, and that yet saw 
and noted every smallest detail; the big 
clumsy hands, apt for such delicacy of work; 
to see him in his rough blue suit, his easy roll- 



Kelmscott and William Morris 251 

ing gait, wandering about, stooping to look at 
the flowers in the beds, or glancing up at the 
sky, or sauntering off to fish in the stream, or 
writing swiftly in the parlour, or working at 
his loom; so bluff, so kindly, so blunt in ad- 
dress, so unaffected, loving all that he saw, 
the tide of full-blooded and restless life run- 
ning so vigorously in his veins; or, further 
back, Rossetti, with his wide eyes, half-bright, 
half-languorous, pale, haunted with impos- 
sible dreams, pacing, rapt in feverish thought, 
through the lonely fields. The ghosts of 
heroes! And whether it was that my own 
memories and affections and visions stirred 
my brain, or that some tide of the spirit still 
sets from the undiscovered shores to the 
scenes of life and love, I know not, but the 
place seemed thronged with unseen presences 
and viewless mysteries of hope. Doubtless, 
loving as we do the precise forms of earthly 
beauty, the wide green pastures, the tender 
grace of age on gable and wall, the springing 
of sweet flowers, the clear gush of the stream, 
we are really in love with some deeper and 
holier thing; yet even about the symbols 
themselves there lingers a consecrating power; 



252 At Large 

and that influence was present with me to- 
day, as I went homewards in the westering 
light, with the shadows of house and tree 
lengthening across the grass in the still 
afternoon. 

Heroes, I said? Well, I will not here speak 
of Rossetti, though his impassioned heart and 
wayward dreams were made holy, I think, 
through suffering: he has purged his fault. 
But I cannot deny the name of hero to Morris. 
Let me put into words what was happening 
to him at the very time at which he had made 
this sweet place his home. He had already 
done as much in those early years as many 
men do in a lifetime. He had written great 
poems, he had loved and wedded, he had made 
abundant friends, his wealth was growing 
fast; he loved every detail of his work, design- 
ing, weaving, dyeing; he had a band of de- 
voted workers and craftsmen under him. He 
could defy the world; he cared nothing at all 
for society or honours. He had magnificent 
vitality, a physique which afforded him every 
kind of wholesome momentary enjoyment. 

In the middle of all this happy activity a 
cloud came over his mind, blotting out the 



Kelmscott and William Morris 253 

sunshine. Partly, perhaps, private sorrows 
had something to do with it; partly, perhaps, 
a weakening of physical fibre, after a life of 
enormous productivity and restless energy, 
made itself felt. But these were only inciden- 
tal causes. What began to weigh upon him 
was the thought of all the toiling thousands 
of humanity, whose lives of labour precluded 
them from the enjoyment of all or nearly all 
of the beautiful things that were to him the 
very essence of life; and, what was worse still, 
he perceived that the very faculty of higher 
enjoyment was lacking, the instinct for beauty 
having been atrophied and almost eradicated 
by sad inheritance. He saw that not only did 
the workers not feel the joyful love of art and 
natural beauty, but that they could not have 
enjoyed such pleasures, even if they were to be 
brought near to them; and then came the 
further and darker thought, that modern art 
was, after all, a hollow and a soulless thing. 
He saw round him beautiful old houses like 
his own, old churches which spoke of a high 
natural instinct for fineness of form and de- 
tail. These things seemed to stand for a wide- 
spread and lively joy in simple beauty which 



254 At Large 

seemed to have vanished out of the world. In 
ancient times it was natural to the old build- 
ers if they had, say, a barn to build, to make 
it strong and seemly and graceful; to buttress 
it with stone, to bestow care and thought upon 
coign and window-ledge and dripstone; to 
prop the roof on firm and shapely beams, and 
to cover it with honest stone tiles, each one of 
which had an individuality of its own. But 
now he saw that if people built naturally, they 
ran up flimsy walls of brick, tied them to- 
gether with iron rods, and put a curved roof 
of galvanised iron on the top. It was bad 
enough that it should be built so, but what 
was worse still was that no one saw or heeded 
the difference; they thought the new style was 
more convenient, and the question of beauty 
never entered their minds at all. They re- 
morselessly pulled down, or patched meanly 
and sordidly, the old work. And thus he be- 
gan to feel that modern art was an essentially 
artificial thing, a luxury existing for a few- 
leisurely people, and no longer based on a deep 
universal instinct. He thought that art was 
wounded to death by competition and hurry 
and vulgarity and materialism, and that it 



Kelmscott and William Morris 255 

must die down altogether before a sweet natu- 
ral product could arise from the stump. 

Then, too, Morris was not an individualist; 
he cared, one may think, about things more 
than people. A friend of his once complained 
that, if he were to die, Morris would no doubt 
grieve for him and even miss him, but that it 
would make no gap in his life, nor interrupt 
his energy of work. He cared for movements, 
for classes, for groups of men, more than he 
cared for persons. And thus the idea came 
to him, in a mournful year of reflection, that 
it was not only a mistake, but of the nature 
of sin, to isolate himself in a little Paradise 
of art of his own making, and to allow the 
great noisy, ugly, bewildered world to go on 
its way. It was a noble grief. The thought 
of the bare, uncheered, hopeless lives of the 
poor came to weigh on him like an ob- 
session, and he began to turn over in his mind 
what he could do to unravel the knotted 
skein. 

" I am rather in a discouraged mood," he 
wrote on New Year's Day, 1880, " and the 
whole thing seems almost too tangled to see 
through and too heavy to move." And again : 



256 At Large 

I have of late been somewhat melancholy (rather 
too strong a word, but I don't know another) ; not 
so much so as not to enjoy life in a way, but just 
so much as a man of middle age who has met with 
rubs (though less than his share of them) may 
sometimes be allowed to be. When one is just so 
much subdued one is apt to turn more specially 
from thinking of one's own affairs to more worthy 
matters; and my mind is very full of the great 
change which I hope is slowly coming over the 
world. 

And so he plunged into Socialism. He gave 
up his poetry and much of his congenial work. 
He attended meetings and committees; he 
wrote leaflets and pamphlets; he lavished 
money; he took to giving lectures and ad- 
dresses; he exposed himself to misunder- 
standings and insults. He spoke in rain at 
street corners to indifferent loungers; he 
pushed a little cart about the squares selling 
Socialist literature; he had collisions with the 
police; he was summoned before magistrates: 
the " poetic upholsterer," as he was called, 
became an object of bewildered contempt to 
friends and foes alike. The work was not 
congenial to him, but he did it well, develop- 
ing infinite tolerance and good-humour, and 
even tactfulness, in his relations with other 



Kelmscott and William Morris 257 

men. The exposure to the weather, the strain, 
the neglect of his own physical needs, brought 
on, undoubtedly, the illness of which he event- 
ually died; and worst of all was the growing 
shadow of discouragement, which made him 
gradually aware that the times were not ripe, 
and that even if the people could seize the 
power they desired, they could not use it. He 
became aware that the worker's idea of rising 
in the social scale was not the idea of gaining 
security, leisure, independence, and love of 
honest work, but the hope of migrating to the 
middle class, and becoming a capitalist on a 
small scale. That was the last thing that 
Morris desired. Most of all he felt the charge 
of inconsistency that was dinned into his ears. 
It was held ridiculous that a wealthy capitalist 
and a large employer of labour, living, if not 
in luxury, at least in considerable stateliness, 
should profess Socialist ideas without at- 
tempting to disencumber himself of his wealth. 
He wrote in answer to a loving remonstrance: 

You see, my dear, I can't help it. The ideas which 
have taken hold of me will not let me rest; nor can 
I see anything else worth thinking of. How can it 
be otherwise, when to me society, which to many 
seems an orderly arrangement for allowing decent 

17 



2S8 At Large 

people to get through their lives creditably and with 
some pleasure, seems mere cannibalism; nay, worse 
(for there ought to be hope in that), is grown so 
corrupt, so steeped in hypocrisy and lies, that one 
turns from one stratum of it to another with hope- 
less loathing. . . . Meantime, what a little ruf- 
fles me is this, that if I do a little fail in my duty 
some of my friends will praise me for failing in- 
stead of blaming me. 

And then at last, after every sordid circum- 
stance of intrigue and squabble and jealousy, 
one after another of the organisations he 
joined broke down. Half gratefully and half 
mournfully he disengaged himself, not because 
he did not believe in his principles, but be- 
cause he saw that the difficulties were insu- 
perable. He came back to the old life; he 
flung himself with renewed ardour into art 
and craftsmanship. He began to write the 
beautiful and romantic prose tales, with their 
enchanting titles, which are, perhaps, his 
most characteristic work. He learnt by slow 
degrees that a clean sweep of an evil system 
cannot be made in a period or a lifetime by an 
individual, however serious or strenuous he 
may be; he began to perceive that, if society 
is to put ideas in practice, the ideas must first 
be there, clearly defined and widely appre- 



Kelmscott and William Morris 259 

hended; and that it is useless to urge men to 
a life of which they have no conception and 
for which they have no desire. He had al- 
ways held it to be a sacred duty for people to 
live, if possible, in whatever simplicity, among 
beautiful things; and it may be said that no 
one man in one generation has ever effected 
so much in this direction. He has, indeed, 
leavened and educated taste; he has destroyed 
a vile and hypocritical tradition of domestic 
art; by his writings he has opened a door for 
countless minds into a remote and fragrant 
region of unspoilt romance; and, more still 
than this, he remains an example of one who 
made a great and triumphant resignation of 
all that he held most dear, for the sake of do- 
ing what he thought to be right. He was not 
an ascetic, giving up what is half an incum- 
brance and half a terror ; nor was he naturally 
a melancholy and detached person; but he 
gave up work which he loved passionately, and 
a life which he lived in a full-blooded, gener- 
ous way, that he might try to share his bless- 
ings with others, out of a supreme pity for 
those less richly endowed than himself. 
How, then, should not this corner of the 



26o At Large 

world, which he loved so dearly, speak to the 
spirit with a voice and an accent far louder 
and more urgent than its own tranquil habit 
of sunny peace and green-shaded sweetness! 
'• You know my faith," wrote Morris from 
Kelmscott in a bewildered hour, " and how I 
feel I have no sort of right to revenge myself 
for any of my private troubles on the kind 
earth ; and here I feel her kindness very spe- 
cially, and am bound not to meet it with a long 
face." Noble and high-hearted words! for he 
of all men seemed made by nature to enjoy 
security and beauty and the joys of living, if 
ever man was so made. His very lack of 
personal sensitiveness, his unaptness to be 
moved by the pathetic appeal of the individual, 
might have been made a shield for his own 
peace; but he laid that shield down, and bared 
his breast to the sharp arrows; and in his 
noble madness to redress the wrongs of the 
world he was, perhaps, more like one of his 
great generous knights than he himself ever 
suspected. 

This, then, I think is the reason why this 
place — a grey grange at the end of a country 
lane, among water meadows — has so ample a 



Kelmscott and William Morris 261 

call for the spirit. A place of which Morris 
wrote, " The scale of everything of the small- 
est, but so sweet, so unusual even; it was like 
the background of an innocent fairy-story." 
Yes, it might have been that! Many of the 
simplest and quietest of lives had been lived 
there, no doubt, before Morris came that way. 
But with him came a realisation of its virtues, 
a perception that in its smallness and sweet- 
ness it yet held imprisoned, like the gem that 
sits on the smallest finger of a hand, an ocean 
of light and colour. The two things that lend 
strength to life are, in the first place, an ap- 
preciation of its quality, a perception of its 
intense and awful significance — the thought 
that we here hold in our hands, if we could 
but piece it all together, the elements and por- 
tions of a mighty, an overwhelming problem. 
The fragments of that mighty mystery are 
sorrow, sin, suffering, joy, hope, life, death. 
Things of their nature sharply opposed, and 
yet that are, doubtless, somehow and some- 
where, united and composed and reconciled. 
It is at this sad point that many men and most 
artists stop short. They see what they love 
and desire; they emphasise this and rest upon 



262 At Large 

it; and when the surge of suffering buffets 
them away, they drown, bewildered, struggling 
for breath, complaining. 

But for the true man it is otherwise. He 
is penetrated with the desire that all should 
share his joy and be emboldened by it. It 
casts a cold shadow over the sunshine, it mars 
the scent of the roses, it wails across the coo- 
ing of the doves — the sense that others suffer 
and toil unhelped; and still more grievous to 
him is the thought that, were these duller 
natures set free from the galling yoke, their 
mirth would be evil and hideous, they would 
have no inkling of the sweeter and the purer 
joy. And then, if he be wise, he tries his 
hardest, in slow and wearied hours, to com- 
fort, to interpret, to explain; in much heavi- 
ness and dejection he labours, while all the 
time, though he knows it not, the sweet ripple 
of his thoughts spreads across the stagnant 
pool. He may be flouted, contemned, insulted, 
but he heeds it not; while all the strands of 
the great mystery, dark and bright alike, work 
themselves, delicately and surely, into the 
picture of his life, and the picture of other 
lives as well. Larger and richer grows the 



Kelmscott and William Morris 263 

great design, till it is set in some wide hall or 
corridor of the House of Life; and the figure 
of the toil-worn knight, with armour dinted 
and brow dimmed with dust and sweat, kneel- 
ing at the shrine, makes the very silence of 
the place beautiful; while those that go to and 
fro rejoicCj not in the suffering and weariness, 
not in the worn face and the thin, sun- 
browned hands, but in the thought that he 
loved all things well; that his joy was pure 
and high, that his clear eyes pierced the dull 
mist that wreathed cold field and dripping 
wood, and that, when he sank, outworn and 
languid after the day's long toil, the jocund 
trumpets broke out from the high -walled town 
in a triumphant concert, because he had done 
worthily, and should now see greater things 
than these. 



XII 
A Speech Day 

IN the course of the summer it was my lot to 
attend the Speech-Day festivities of a cer- 
tain school — indeed, I attended at more than 
one such gathering, vocatus atque non vocatus, 
as Horace says. They are not the sort of en- 
tertainments I should choose for pleasure; 
one feels too much like a sheep, driven from 
pen to pen, kindly and courteously driven, but 
still driven. One is fed rather than eats. 
One meets a number of charming and inter- 
esting people, and one has no time to talk to 
them. But I am always glad to have gone, 
and one carries away pleasant memories of 
kindness and courtesy, of youth and hope. 

This particular occasion was so very typi- 
cal that I am going to try and gather up my 
impressions and ideas. It was an old school 
and a famous school, though not one of the 
most famous. The buildings large and effec- 
264 



A Speech Day 265 

tive, full of modern and up-to-date improve- 
ments, with a mellow core of antiquity, in the 
shape of a venerable little court-yard in the 
centre. There were green lawns and pleasant 
gardens and umbrageous trees; and it was a 
beautiful day, too, sunny and fresh, so that 
one was neither baked nor boiled. The first 
item was a luncheon, at which I sat between 
two very pleasant strangers and exchanged 
cautious views on education. We agreed that 
the value of the classics as a staple of mental 
training was perhaps a little overrated, and 
that possibly too much attention was nowa- 
days given to athletics; but that after all the 
public-school system w^as the backbone of the 
country, and taught boys how to behave like 
gentlemen, and how to govern subject races. 
We agreed that they were ideal training- 
grounds for character, and that our public- 
schools were the envy of the civilised world. 
In such profound and suggestive interchange 
of ideas the time sped rapidly away. 

Then we were gathered into a big hall. It 
was pleasant to see proud parents and charm- 
ing sisters, wearing their best, clustered ex- 
citedly round some sturdy and well-brushed 



266 At Large 

young hero, the hope of the race; pleas- 
ant to see frock-coated masters, beaming with 
professional benevolence, elderly gentlemen 
smilingly recalling tales of youthful prowess, 
which had grown quite epical in the lapse of 
time; it was inspiriting to feel one of a big 
company of people, all bent on being for once 
as good-humoured and cheerful as possible, 
and all inspired by a vague desire to improve 
the occasion. 

The prizes were given away to the accom- 
paniment of a rolling thunder of applause; we 
had familiar and ingenuous recitations from 
youthful orators, who desired friends, Ro- 
mans, and countrymen to lend them their ears, 
or accepted the atrocious accusation of being 
a young man; and then a Bishop, who had 
been a schoolmaster himself, delivered an ad- 
dress. It was delightful to see and hear the 
good man expatiate. I did not believe much 
in what he said, nor could I reasonably en- 
dorse many of his statements; but he did it 
all so genially and naturally that one felt al- 
most ashamed to question the matter of his 
discourse. Yet I could not help wondering 
why it is thought advisable always to say 



A Speech Day 267 

exactly the same things on these occasions. 
The good man began by asserting that the boys 
would never be so happy or so important again 
iu their lives as they were at school, and that 
all grown-up people were envying them. I 
don't know whether any one believed that; I 
am sure the boys did not, if I can judge by 
what my own feelings used to be on such oc- 
casions. Personally I used to think my school 
a very decent sort of place, but I looked for- 
ward with excitement and interest to the 
liberty and life of the larger world; and 
though perhaps in a way we elders envied the 
boys for having the chances before them that 
we had so many of us neglected to seize, I 
don't suppose that with the parable of Vice 
Versa before us we would really have changed 
places with them. Would any one ever return 
willingly to discipline and barrack-life? 
Would any one under discipline refuse in- 
dependence if it were offered him on easy 
terms? I doubt it! 

Then the Bishop went on to talk about 
educational things; and he said with much 
emphasis that in spite of all that was said 
about modern education, we most of us real- 



268 At Large 

ised as we grew older that all culture was 
really based upon the Greek and Latin 
classics. We all stamped on the ground and 
cheered at that, I as lustily as the rest, though 
I am quite sure it is not true. All that the 
Bishop really meant was that such culture as 
he himself possessed had been based on the 
classics. Now the Bishop is a robust, genial, 
and sensible man, but he is not a strictly cul- 
tured man. He is only sketchily varnished 
with culture. He thinks that German litera- 
ture is nebulous, and French literature im- 
moral. I don't suppose he ever reads an 
English book, except perhaps an ecclesiastical 
biography; he would say that he had no time 
to read a novel; probably he glances at the 
Christian Year on Sundays, and peruses a 
Waverley novel if he is kept in bed by a cold. 
Yet he considers himself, and would be gen- 
erally considered, a well-educated man. I 
believe myself that the reason why we as a 
nation love good literature so little is because 
we are starved at an impressionable age on a 
diet of classics; and to persist in regarding 
the classics as the high-water mark of the 
human intellect seems to me to argue a melan- 



A Speech Day 269 

choly want of faith in the progress of the 
race. However, for the moment we all be- 
lieved ourselves to be men of a high culture, 
soundly based on the corner-stone of Latin 
and Greek. Then the Bishop went on to speak 
of athletics with a solemn earnestness, and 
he said, with deep conviction, that experience 
had taught him that whatever was worth do- 
ing was worth doing well. He did not argue 
the point as to whether all games were worth 
playing, or whether by filling up all the spare 
time of boys with them, by crowning success- 
ful athletes with glory and worship, by en- 
gaging masters who will talk with profound 
seriousness about bowling and batting, row- 
ing and football, one might not be developing 
a perfectly false sense of proportion. He 
told the boys to play games with all their 
might, and he left on their minds the impres- 
sion that athletics were certainly things to 
be ranked among the Christian graces. Of 
course he sincerely believed in them himself. 
He would have maintained that they developed 
manliness and vigour, and discouraged loafing 
and uncleanness. I am not at all sure myself 
that games as at present organised do minis- 



270 At Large 

ter directly to virtue. The popularity of the 
athlete is a dangerous thing if he is not vir- 
tuously inclined; while the excessive organisa- 
tion of games discourages individuality, and 
emphasises a very false standard of success 
in the minds of many boys. But the Bishop 
was not invited that he might say unconven- 
tional things. He was asked on purpose to 
bless things as they were, and he blessed them 
with all his might. 

Then he went on to say that the real point 
after all was character and conduct; that in- 
tellect was a gift of God, and that conspicu- 
ous athletic capacity was a gift — he did not 
like to say of God, so he said of Providence; 
but that in one respect we were all equal, and 
that was in our capacity for moral effort; and 
that the boy who came to the front was not 
always the distinguished scholar or the famous 
athlete, but the industrious, trustworthy, 
kindly, generous, public-spirited boy. This he 
said with deep emotion, as though it were 
rather a daring and unexpected statement, 
but discerned by a vigilant candour; and all 
this with the air that he was testifying faith- 
fully to the true values of life, and sweeping 



A Speech Day 271 

aside with a courageous hand the false glow 
and glamour of the world. We did not like 
to applaud at this, but we made a subdued 
drumming with our heels, and uttered a sort 
of murmurous assent to a noble and far from 
obvious proposition. 

But here again I felt that the thing was 
somehow not quite as high-minded as it 
seemed. The goal designated was, after all, 
the goal of success. It was not suggested that 
the unrewarded and self-denying life was per- 
haps the noblest. The point was to come to 
the front somehow, and it was only indicating 
a sort of waiting game for the boys who were 
conscious neither of intellectual nor athletic 
capacity. It was a sort of false socialism, 
this pretence of moral equality, a kind of con- 
solation prize that was thus emphasised. And 
I felt that here again the assumption was an 
untrue one. That is the worst of life, if one 
examines it closely, that it is by no means 
wholly run on moral lines. It is strength that 
is rewarded, rather than good desires. The 
Bishop seemed to have forgotten the ancient 
maxim that prosperity is the blessing of the 
Old Testament, and affliction the blessing of 



2 72 At Large 

the New. These qualities that were going to 
produce ultimate success — conscientiousness, 
generosity, modesty, public spirit — they are, 
after all, as much gifts as any other gifts of 
intellect and bodily skill. How often has one 
seen boys who are immodest, idle, frivolous, 
mean-spirited, and ungenerous attain to the 
opposite virtues? Not often, I confess. Who 
does not know of abundant instances of boys 
who have been selfish, worthless, grasping, un- 
principled, who have yet achieved success 
intellectually and athletically, and have also 
done well for themselves, amassed money, and 
obtained positions for themselves in after life. 
Looking back on my own school days, I can- 
not honestly say that the prizes of life have 
fallen to the pure-minded, affectionate, high- 
principled boys. The boys I remember who 
have achieved conspicuous success in the 
world have been hard-hearted, prudent, hon- 
ourable characters with a certain superficial 
honhomie, who by a natural instinct did the 
things that paid. Stripped of its rhetoric, the 
Bishop's address resolved itself into a panegyr- 
ic of success, and the morality of it was that 
if you could not achieve intellectual and 



A Speech Day 273 

athletic prominence, you might get a certain 
degree of credit by unostentatious virtue. 
What I felt was that somehow the goal pro- 
posed was — dare I hint it? — a vulgar one; 
that it was a glorification of prudence and 
good-humoured self-interest; and yet if the 
Bishop had preached the gospel of disinter- 
estedness and quiet faithfulness and devotion, 
he would have had few enthusiastic hearers. 
If he had said that an awkward and surly 
manner, no matter what virtues it concealed, 
was the greatest bar to ultimate mundane suc- 
cess, it would have been quite true, though 
perhaps not particularly edifying. But what 
I desired was not startling paradox or cynical 
comment, but something more really manly, 
more just, more unconventional, more ardent, 
more disinterested. The boys were not ex- 
horted to care for beautiful things for the 
sake of their beauty ; but to care for attractive 
things for the sake of their acceptability. 

And yet in a way it did us all good to listen 
to the great man. He was so big and kindly 
and fatherly and ingenuous; he had made vir 
tue pay; I do not suppose he had ever had a 
low or an impure or a spiteful thought; but 



2 74 At Large 

his path had been easy from the first; he was 
a scholar and an athlete, and he had never 
pursued success, for the simple reason that it 
had fallen from heaven like manna round 
about his dwelling, with perhaps a few dozen 
quails as well! Boys, parents, masters, young 
and old alike, were assembled that day to wor- 
ship success, and the Bishop prophesied good 
concerning them. It entered no one's head 
that success, in its simplest analysis, means 
thrusting some one else aside from a place 
which he desires to fill. But why on such a 
day should one think of the feelings of others? 
we were all bent on virtuously gratifying our 
own desires. The boys who were left out were 
the :weak and the timid, the ailing and the 
erring, the awkward and the unpopular, the 
clumsy and the stupid; they were not bidden 
to take courage, they were rather bidden to 
envy the unattainable, and to submit with 
such grace as they could muster. But we 
pushed all such vague and unsatisfactory 
thoughts in the background; we sounded the 
clarion and filled the fife, and were at ease in 
Zion, while we worshipped the great, brave, 
glittering world. 



A Speech Day 275 

What I desired was that, in the height of 
our jubilant self-gratulation, some sweet and 
gracious figure, full of heavenly wisdom, could 
have twitched the gaudy curtain aside for a 
moment and shown us other things than these; 
who could have assured us that we all, how- 
ever stupid and dreary and awkward and 
indolent, however vexed with low dreams 
and ugly temptations, yet had our share and 
place in the rich inheritance of life; and that 
even if it was to be all a record of dull failure, 
commonplace sinfulness, cheered by no joyful 
triumph, no friendly smile — yet if we fought 
the fault and did the dull task faithfully, and 
desired to be but a little better, a little 
stronger, a little more unselfish, that the pil- 
grimage with all its sandy tracts and terrify- 
ing spectres would not be traversed in vain ; and 
then I think we might have been brought to- 
gether with a sense of sweeter and truer unity, 
and might have thought of life as a thing to 
be shared, and joy as a thing to be lavished, 
and not have rather conceived of the world as 
a place full of fine things, of which we were all 
to gather sedulously as many as we could 
grasp and retain. 



276 At Large 



Or even if the good Bishop had taken a 
simpler line and told the boys some old story, 
like the story of Polycrates of Samos, I should 
have been more comfortable. Polycrates was 
the tyrant with whom everything went well 
that he set his hand to, so that to avoid the 
punishment of undue prosperity he threw his 
great signet-ring into the sea ; but when he was 
served a day or two later with a slice of fish 
at his banquet, there was the ring sticking 
in its ribs. The Bishop might have said that 
this should teach us not to try and seize all 
the good things we could, and that the reason 
of it was not, as the old Greeks thought, that 
the gods envied the prosperity of mortals, but 
that our prosperity was often dashed very 
wisely and tenderly from our lips, because one 
of the worst foes that a man can have, one of 
the most blinding and bewildering of faults, 
is the sense of self-sufficiency and security. 
That would not have spoilt the pleasure of 
those brisk boys, but would have given them 
something wholesome to take away and 
think about, like the prophet's roll that 
was sweet in the mouth and bitter in the 
belly. 



A Speech Day 277 

It may be thought that I have thus dilated 
on the Bishop's address for the sole purpose 
of showing what a much better address I could 
have made. That is not the case at all. I 
could not have done the thing at all to start 
with, and, given both the nerve and the pres- 
ence and the practice of the man, I could not 
have done it a quarter as well, because he was 
in tune with his audience and I should not 
have been. That was to me part of the trag- 
edy. The Bishop's voice fell heavily and 
steadily, like a stream of water from a great 
iron pipe that fills a reservoir. The audience, 
too, were all in the most elementary mood. 
Boys of course frankly desire success without 
any disguise. And parents less frankly but 
no less hungrily, in an almost tigerish way, 
desire it for their children. The intensity of 
belief felt by a parent in a stupid or even vi- 
cious boy would be one of the most pathetic 
things I know, if it were not also one of the 
primal forces of the world. 

And thus the tide being high the Bishop 
went into harbour at the top of the flood. I 
don't even complain of the nature of the ad- 
dress; it was frankly worldly, such as might 



278 At Large 

have been given by a Sadducee in the time of 
Christ. But the interesting thing about it 
was that most of the people present believed 
it to be an ethical and even a religious ad- 
dress. It was the ethio of a professional 
bowler and the religion of a banker. If a boy 
had been for all intents and purposes a pro- 
fessional bowler to the age of twenty-three, and 
a professional banker afterwards, he would 
almost exactly have fulfilled the Bishop^s ideal. 
I do not think it is a bad ideal either. I only 
say that it is not an exalted ideal, and it is 
not a Christian ideal. It is the world in dis- 
guise, the wolf in sheep's clothing over again. 
We were taken in. We said to ourselves, 
" This is an animal certainly clothed as a 
sheep — and we must remember the old pro- 
verb and be careful." But as the Bishop's 
address proceeded, and the fragrant oil fell 
down to the skirts of our clothing, we said, 
** There is certainly a sheep inside." 

Then a choir of strong, rough, boyish voices 
sang an old glee or two — " Glorious Apollo " 
and " Hail smiling Morn," and a school song 
about the old place that made some of us bite 
our lips and furtively brush away an unex- 



A Speech Day 279 

pected and inexplicable moisture from our 
eyes, at the thought of the fine fellows we had 
ourselves sat side by side with thirty and 
forty years ago, now scattered to all ends of 
the earth, and some of them gone from the 
here to the everywhere, as the poet says. And 
then we adjourned to see the School Corps in- 
spected — such solemn little soldiers, marching 
past in their serviceable uniforms, the line 
rising and falling with the inequalities of the 
ground, and bowing out a good deal in the 
centre, at the very moment that the good-na- 
tured old Colonel was careful to look the other 
way. Then there was a leisurely game of 
cricket, with a lot of very old boys playing 
with really amazing agility; and then I fell 
in with an old acquaintance, and we strolled 
about together, and got a friendly master to 
show us over the schoolrooms and one of the 
houses, and admired the excellent arrange- 
ments, and peeped into some studies crowded 
with pleasant boyish litter, and talked to some 
of the boys with an attempt at light juvenility, 
and enjoyed ourselves in a thoroughly absurd 
and leisurely fashion. And then I was left 
alone, and walking about, abandoned myself 



28o At Large 

to sentiment pure and simple; it was hard to 
analyse that feeling which was stirred by the 
sight of all those fresh-faced boys, flowing like 
a stream through the old buildings, and just 
leaving their own little mark, for good or evil, 
on the place — a painted name on an Honours 
board, initials cut in desk or panel, a memory 
or two, how soon to grow dim in the minds 
of the new generation, who would be so full 
of themselves and of the present, turning the 
sweet-scented manuscript of youth with such 
eager fingers, that they could give but little 
thought to the future and none at all to the 
past. And then one remembered, with a curi- 
ous sense of wistful pain, how rapidly the 
cards of life were being dealt out to one, and 
how long it was since one had played the card 
of youth so heedlessly and joyfully away; that 
at least could not return. And then there 
came the thought of all the hope and love that 
centred upon these children, and all the pos- 
sibilities which lay before them. And I began 
to think of my own contemporaries and of 
how little on the whole they had done; it was 
not fair perhaps to say that most of them 
had made a mess of their lives, because they 



A Speech Day 281 

were honest, honourable citizens many of 
them. It was not the poor thing called suc- 
cess that I was thinking of, but a sort of 
high-hearted and generous dealing with life, 
making the most of one's faculties and quali- 
ties, diffusing a glow of love and enthu- 
siasm and brave zest about one — how few of 
us had done that! We had grown indolent 
and money-loving and commonplace. Some of 
those we looked to to redeem and glorify the 
world had failed most miserably, through un- 
checked faults of temperament. Some had 
declined with a sort of unambitious comfort; 
some had fallen into the trough of Toryism, 
and spent their time in holding fast to conven- 
tional and established things; one or two had 
flown like Icarus so near the sun that their 
waxen wings had failed them; and jet some 
of us had missed greatness by so little. Was 
it to be always so? Was it always to be a 
battle against hopeless odds? Was defeat, 
earlier or later, inevitable? The tamest de- 
feat of all was to lapse smoothly into easy 
conventional ways, to adopt the standards of 
the world, and rake together contentedly and 
seriously the straws and dirt of the street. 



282 At Large 

If that was to be the destiny of most, why 
were we haunted in youth with the sight of 
that cloudy, gleaming crown within our reach, 
that sense of romance, that phantom of no- 
bleness? What was the significance of the 
aspirations that made the heart beat high on 
fresh sunlit mornings, the dim and beautiful 
hopes that came beckoning as we looked from 
our windows in a sunset hour, with the sky 
flushing red behind the old towers, the sense 
of illimitable power, of stainless honour, that 
came so bravely, when the organ bore the 
voices aloft in the lighted chapel at evensong? 
Was all that not a real inspiration at all, but 
a mere accident of boyish vigour? No, it was 
not a delusion — that was life as it was meant 
to be lived, and the best victory was to keep 
that hope alive in the heart amid a hundred 
failures, a thousand cares. 

As I walked thus full of fancies, the boys 
singly or in groups kept passing me, smiling, 
full of delighted excitement and chatter, all 
intent on themselves and their companions. 
I heard scraps of their talk, inconsequent 
names, accompanied with downright praise or 
blame, unintelligible exploits, happy nonsense. 



A Speech Day 283 

How odd it is to note that when we Anglo- 
Saxons are at our happiest and most cheerful, 
we expend so much of our steam in frank de- 
rision of each other ! Yet though I can hardly 
remember a single conversation of my school 
days, the thought of my friendships and alli- 
ances is all gilt with a sense of delightful 
eagerness. Now that I am a writer of books, 
it matters even more how I say a thing than 
what I say. But then it was the other way. 
It was what we felt that mattered, and talk was 
but the sparkling outflow of trivial thought. 
What heroes we made of sturdy, unemphatic 
boys, how we repeated each other's jokes, 
what merciless critics we were of each other, 
how little allowance we made for weakness or 
oddity, how easily we condoned all faults in 
one who was good-humoured and strong! 
How tiie little web of intrigue and gossip, of 
likes and dislikes, wove and unwove itself! 
What hopeless Tories we were ! How we stood 
upon our rights and privileges! I have few 
illusions as to the innocence or the justice or 
the generosity of boyhood; what boys really 
admire are grace and effectiveness and readi- 
ness. And yet, looking back, one has parted 



284 At Large 

with something, a sort of zest and intensity 
that one would fain have retained. I felt that 
I would have given much to be able to have 
communicated a few of the hard lessons of 
experience that I have learnt by my errors and 
mistakes, to these jolly youngsters; but there 
again comes in the pathos of boyhood, that one 
can make no one a present of experience, and 
that virtue cannot be communicated, or it 
ceases to be virtue. They were bound, all 
those ingenuous creatures, to make their own 
blunders, and one could not save them a single 
one, for all one's hankering to help. That 
is of course the secret, that we are here for 
the sake of experience, and not for the sake 
of easy happiness. Yet one would keep the 
hearts of these boys pure and untarnished and 
strong, if one could, though even as one 
walked among them one could see faces on 
which temptation and sin had already written 
itself in legible signs. 

The cricket drew to an end; the shadows 
began to lengthen on the turf. The mimic 
warriors were disbanded. The tea-t/ables 
made their appearance under the elms, where 
one was welcomed and waited upon by cheer- 



A Speech Day 285 

ful matrons and neat maid-servants, and de- 
lightfully zealous and inefficient boys. One 
had but to express a preference to have half- 
a-dozen plates pressed upon one by smiling 
Ganymedes. If schools cannot alter char- 
acter, they certainly can communicate to our 
cheerful English boys the most delightful 
manners in the worldj so unembarrassed, cour- 
teous, easy, graceful, without the least touch 
of exaggeration or self-consciousness. I sup- 
pose one has insular prejudices, for we are cer- 
tainly not looked upon as models of courtesy 
or consideration by our Continental neigh- 
bours. I suppose we reserve our best for our- 
selves. I expressed a wish to look at some 
of the new buildings, and a young gentleman 
of prepossessing exterior became my unaf- 
fected cicerone. He was not one who dealt 
in adjectives; his highest epithet of praise 
was " pretty decent," but one detected an 
honest and unquestioning pride in the place 
for all that. 

Perhaps the best point of all about these 
schools of ours, is that the aspect of the place 
and the tone of the dwellers in it does not 
vary appreciably on days of festival and on 



286 At Large 

working days. The beauty of it is a little 
focussed and smartened, but that is all. There 
is no covering up of deficiencies or hiding de- 
solation out of sight. If one goes downa to a 
public-school on an ordinary day, one finds 
the same brave life, the same unembarrassed 
courtesy prevailing. There is no sense of be- 
ing taken by surprise; the life is all open to 
inspection on any day and at any hour. We 
do not reserve ourselves for occasions in Eng- 
land. The meat cuts wholesomely and pleas- 
antly wherever it is sampled. 

The disadvantage of this is that we are mis- 
judged by foreigners because we are seen, not 
at our best, but as we are. We do not feel 
the need of recommending ourselves to the 
favourable consideration of others; not that 
that is a virtue, it is rather the shadow of 
complacency and patriotism. 

But at last a feeling begins to arise in the 
minds both of hosts and guests that the play 
is played out for the day, that the little fes- 
tivity is over. On the part of our hosts that 
feeling manifests itself in a tendency to press 
departing guests to stay a little longer. An 
old acquaintance of mine, a shy man, once 



A Speech Day 287 

gave a large garden-party and had a band to 
play. He did his best for a time and times 
and half-a-time; but at last he began to feel 
that the strain was becoming intolerable. 
^yith desperate ingenuity he sought out the 
band-master, told him to leave out the rest of 
the programme, and play " God Save the 
King," — the result being a furious exodus of 
his guests. To-day no such device is needed. 
We melt away, leaving our kind entertainers 
to the pleasant weariness that comes of sus- 
tained geniality, and to the sense that three 
hundred and sixty-four days have to elapse 
before the next similar festival. 

And, for myself, I carry away with me a 
gracious memory of a day thrilled by a variety 
of conflicting and profound emotions; and if 
I feel that perhaps life would be both easier 
and simpler, if we could throw off a little more 
of our conventional panoply of thought, could 
face our problems with a little more candour 
and directness, yet I have had a glimpse of a 
community living an eager, full, vigorous life, 
guarded by sufficient discipline to keep the 
members of it wholesomely and honourably 
obedient, and yet conceding as much personal 



288 At Large 

liberty of thought and action as the general 
interest of the body can admit. I have seen a 
place full of high possibilities and hopes, be- 
stowing a treasure of bright memories of work, 
of play, of friendship, upon the majority of 
its members, and upholding a Spartan ideal 
of personal subordination to the common 
weal, an ideal not enforced by law so much 
as sustained by honour, an institution which, 
if it does not encourage originality, is yet a 
sound reflection of national tendencies, and 
one in which the men who work it devote 
themselves unaffectedly and ungrudgingly to 
the interests of the place, without sentiment 
perhaps, but without ostentation or priggish - 
ness. A place indeed to which one would 
wish perhaps to add a certain intellectual 
stimulus, a mental liberty, yet from which 
there is little that one would desire to take 
away. For if one would like to see our schools 
strengthened, amplified, and expanded, yet one 
would wish the process to continue on the 
existing lines, and not on a different method. 
So, in our zeal for cultivating the further 
hope, let us who would fain see a purer stand- 
ard of morals, a more vigorous intellectual 



A Speech Day 289 

life prevail in our schools, not overlook the 
marvellous progress that is daily and hourly 
being made, and keep the taint of fretful in- 
gratitude out of our designs; and meanwhile 
let us, in the spirit of the old Psalm, wish 
Jerusalem prosperity " for our brethren and 
companions' sakes." 



X9 



XIII 

Literary Finish 

I HAD two literary men staying with me a 
^ week ago, both of them accomplished 
writers, and interested in their art, not pro- 
fessionally and technically only, but ardently 
and enthusiastically. I here label them re- 
spectively Musgrave and Herries. Musgrave 
is a veteran writer, a man of fifty, who makes 
a considerable income by writing, and has 
succeeded in many departments — biography, 
criticism, poetry, essay -writing ; he lacks, how- 
ever, the creative and imaginative gift; his 
observation is acute, and his humour consid- 
able; but he cannot infer and deduce; he 
cannot carry a situation further than he can 
see it. Herries on the other hand is a much 
younger man, with an interest in human be- 
ings that is emotional rather than spectacu- 
lar; while Musgrave is interested mainly in 
290 



Literary Finish 291 

the present, Herries lives in the past or the 
future. Musgrave sees what people do and 
how they behave, while Herries is for ever 
thinking how they must have behaved to 
produce their present conditions, or how they 
would be likely to act under different condi- 
tions. Musgrave's one object is to discover 
what he calls the truth; Herries thrives and 
battens upon illusions. Musgrave is fond of 
the details of life, loves food and drink, con- 
viviality and social engagements, new people 
and unfamiliar places — Herries is quite in- 
different to the garniture of life, lives in great 
personal discomfort, dislikes mixed assemblies 
and chatter, and has a fastidious dislike of the 
present, whatever it is, from a sense that 
possibilities are so much richer than perform- 
ances. Musgrave admits that he has been 
more successful as a writer than he deserves; 
Herries is likely, I think, to disappoint the 
hopes of his friends, and will not do justice 
to his extraordinary gifts, from a certain 
dreaminess and lack of vitality. Musgrave 
loves the act of writing, and is always full to 
the brim of matter. Herries dislikes com- 
position, and is yet drawn to it by a sense of 



292 At Large 

fearful responsibility. Neither has, fortu- 
nately, the least artistic jealousy, Herries re- 
gards a man like Musgrave with a sort of 
incredulous stupefaction, as a stream of inex- 
plicable volume. Herries has to Musgrave all 
the interest of a very delicate and beautiful 
type, whose fastidiousness he can almost envy. 
As a rule, literary men will not discuss their 
art among themselves; they have generally 
arrived at a sort of method of their own, which 
may not be ideal, but which is the best practi- 
cal solution for themselves, and they would 
rather not be disquieted about it; literary 
talk, too, tends to partake of the nature of 
shop, and busy men, as a rule, like to talk the 
shop of their recreations rather than the shop 
of their employment. But Musgrave will dis- 
cuss anything; and as for Herries, writing is 
not an occupation so much as a divine voca- 
tion which he regards with a holy awe. 

The discussion began at dinner, and I was 
amused to see how it affected the two men. 
Musgrave, by an incredible mental agility, con- 
trived to continue to take a critical interest 
in the meal and the argument at the same 
time; Herries thrust away an unfinished plate, 



Literary Finish 293 

refused what was offered to him, pushed his 
glasses about as if they were chessmen, filled 
the nearest with water at intervals — he is a 
rigid teetotaller — and drank out of them al- 
ternately with an abstracted air. 

The point w^as the question of literary fin- 
ish, and the degree to which it can or ought 
to be practised. Herries is of the school of 
Flaubert, and holds that there may be several 
ways of saying a thing, but only one best 
way, and that it is alike the duty and the 
goal of the writer to find that way. This he 
enunciated with some firmness. 

" No," said Musgrave, " I think that is only 
a theory, and breaks down, as all theories do, 
when it is put in practice: look at all the 
really big writers: look at Shakespeare — to 
me his work gives the impression of being both 
hasty and uncorrected. If he says a thing in 
one way, and while he is doing it thinks of a 
more telling form of expression, he does n't 
erase the first statement ; he merely says it over 
again more effectively. He is full of lapses 
and inappropriate passages — and it is thsat 
very thing which gives him such an air of 
reality," 



294 At Large 

" Well, there is a good deal in that," said 
Herries, " but I do not see how you are going 
to prove that it is not deliberate. Shakespeare 
wrote like that in his plays, breathlessly and 
eagerly, because that was the aim he had in 
view; if he makes one of his people say a 
thing tamely, and then more pointedly, it is 
because it is exactly what people do in real 
life, and Shakespeare was thinking with their 
mind for the time being. He is behind the 
person he has made, moving his arms, looking 
through his eyes, breathing through his 
mouth; and just as life itself is hurried and 
inconsequent, so the perfection of art is, not 
to be hurried and inconsequent, but to give 
one the impression of being so. I don't be- 
lieve he left his work uncorrected out of mere 
impatience. Look at the way he wrote when 
he was writing in a different manner — look at 
the Sonnets, for instance — there is plenty of 
calculated art there ! " 

" Yes,'' I said, " there is art there, but I don't 
think it is very deliberate art. I don't be- 
lieve they were written slowly. Of course one 
can hardly be breathless in a sonnet. The 
rhymes are all stretched across the ground, like 



Literary Finish 295 

wires, and one has to pick one's way among 
them." 

" Well, take another instance," said Mus- 
grave. " Look at Scott. He speaks himself 
of his * hurried frankness of execution.' His 
proof-sheets are the most extraordinary things, 
full of impossible sentences, lapses of gram- 
mar, and so forth. He did not do much 
correcting himself, but I believe I am right 
in saying that his publishers did, and spent 
hours in reducing the chaos to order." 

" Oh, of course I don't deny," said Herries, 
" that volume and vitality are what matters 
most. Scott's imagination was at once prodi- 
gious and profound. He seems to me to have 
said to his creations, ^ Let the young men now 
arise and play before us.' But I don't think 
his art was the better for his carelessness. 
Great and noble as the result was, I think it 
would have been greater if he had taken more 
pains. Of course one regards men of genius 
like Scott and Shakespeare with a kind of 
terror — one can forgive them anything; but 
it is because they do by a sort of prodigal in- 
stinct what most people have to do by painful 
effort. If one's imagination has the poignant 



296 At Large 

Tightness of Scott's or Shakespeare's, one's 
hurried work is better than most people's 
finished work. But people of lesser force and 
power, if they get their stitches wrong, have 
to unpick them and do it all over again. 
Sometimes I have an uneasy sense, when I am 
writing, that my characters are feeling as if 
their clothes do not fit. Then they have to 
be undressed, so to speak, that one may see 
where the garments gall them. Now, take a 
book like Madame Bovary, painfully and 
laboriously constructed — it seems obvious 
enough, yet the more one reads it the more one 
becomes aware how every stroke and detail 
tells. What almost appals me about that 
book is the way in which the end is foreseen 
in the beginning, the way in which Flaubert 
seems to have carried the whole thing in his 
head all the time, to have known exactly where 
he was going and how fast he was going." 

"That is perfectly true," I said. "But 
take an instance of another of Flaubert's 
books, Bouvard et Pecuchet, where the same 
method is pursued with what I can only call 
deplorable results. Every detail is perfect of 
its kind. The two grotesque creatures take 



Literary Finish 297 

up one pursuit after another, agriculture, 
education, antiquities, horticulture, distilling 
perfumes, making jam. In each they make 
exactly the absurd mistakes that such people 
would have made; but one loses all sense of 
reality, because one feels that they would not 
have taken up so many things; it is only a 
collection of typical absurdities. Given the 
men and the particular pursuit, it is all 
natural enough, but one wearies of the same 
process being applied an impossible number of 
times, just as Flaubert was often so intoler- 
able in real life, because he ran a joke to 
death, and never knew when to put it down. 
The result in Bouvard et Pecuchet is a lack 
of proportion and subordination. It is like 
one of the early Pre-Raphaelite pictures, in 
which every detail is painted with minute per- 
fection. It was all there, no doubt, and it was 
all exactly like that; but that is not how the 
human eye apprehends a scene. The human 
mind takes a central point, and groups the 
accessories round it. In art, I think every- 
thing depends upon centralisation. Two lov- 
ers part, and the birds' faint chirp from the 
leafless tree, the smouldering rim of the sunset 



298 At Large 

over misty fields, are true and symbolical parts 
of the scene; but if you deal in botany and 
ornithology and meteorology at such a mo- 
ment, you cloud and dim the central point — 
you digress when you ought only to emphasise. 

" Oh yes," said Herries with a sigh, " that 
is all right enough — it all depends upon pro- 
portion; and the worst of all these discussions 
on points of art is that each person has to find 
his own standard — one can't accept other peo- 
ple's standards. To me Bouvard et Pecuchet 
is a piece of almost flawless art — it is there — 
it lives and breathes. I don't like it all, of 
course, but I don't doubt that it happened so. 
There must be an absolute rightness behind 
all sujjreme writing. Art must have laws as 
real and immutable and elaborate as those of 
science and metaphysics and religion — that is 
the central article of my creed." 

" But the worst of that theory is," I said, 
" that one lays down canons of taste, which 
are very neat and pretty; and then there 
comes some new writer of genius, knocks all 
the old canons into fragments, and establishes 
a new law. Canons of art seem to me some- 
times nothing more than classifications of the 



Literary Finish 299 

way that genius works. I find it very hard to 
believe that there is a pattern, so to speak, 
for the snutfers and the candlesticks, revealed 
to Moses in the mount. It was Moses' idea 
of a pair of snuffers, when all is said." 

" I entirely agree," said Musgrave ; " the 
only ultimate basis of all criticism is, ' I like 
it because I like it ' — and the connoisseurs of 
any age are merely the people who have the 
faculty of agreeing, I won't say with the ma- 
jority, but with the majority of competent 
critics." 

" No, no," said Herries, raising his mourn- 
ful eyes to Musgrave's face, " don't talk like 
that! You take my faith away from me. 
Surely there must be some central canon of 
morality in art, just as there is in ethics. 
For instance, in ethics, is it conceivable that 
cruelty might become right, if only enough 
people thought it was right? Is there no ab- 
solute principle at all? In art, what about 
the great pictures and the great poems, which 
have approved themselves to the best minds 
in generation after generation? Their right- 
ness and their beauty are only attested by 
critics, they are surely not created by them? 



300 At Large 

My view is that there is an absplute law of 
beauty, and that we grow nearer to it by 
slow degrees. Sometimes, as with the Greeks, 
people got very near to it indeed. Is it con- 
ceivable, for instance, that men could ever 
come to regard the Venus of Milo as ugly ? " 

" Why, yes," said Musgrave, laughing, " I 
suppose that if humanity developed on differ- 
ent lines, and a new type of beauty became 
desirable, we might come to look upon the 
Venus of Milo as a barbarous and savage kind 
of object, a dreadful parody of what we had 
become, like a female chimpanzee. To a male 
chimpanzee, the wrinkled brow, the long 
upper lip, the deeply indented lines from nose 
to mouth, of a female chimpanzee in the prime 
of adolescence, is, I suppose, almost intoler- 
ably dazzling and adorable — beauty can only 
be a relative thing, when all is said." 

" We are drifting away from our point," I 
said. ^' The question really is whether, as art 
expands, the principles become fewer or more 
numerous. My own belief is that the princi- 
ples do become fewer, but the varieties of 
expression more numerous. Keats tried to 
sum it up by saying, ^ Beauty is Truth, Truth 



Literary Finish 301 

Beauty ; ' but it is not a successful maxim, 
because, as a peevish philosopher said, ^ Why 
iu that case have two words for the same 
thing?"' 

" But it is true, in a sense, for all that," said 
Herries. " What we have learnt is that the 
subject is of very little importance in art — 
it is the expression that matters. Genre 
pictures, plots of novels, incidents of plays — 
they are all rather elementary things. 
Flaubert looked forward to a time in art when 
there should be no subjects at all, when art 
should aspire to the condition of music, and 
express the intangible." 

'^ I confess," said Musgrave, laughing, 
*' that that statement conveys nothing to me. 
A painter, on that line, would depict nothing, 
but simply produce a sort of harmony of 
colour. A picture would become simply a 
texture of colour-vibrations. My own view is 
rather that it is a question of accurate ob- 
servation, followed by an extreme delicacy 
and suggestiveness of expression. Some peo- 
ple would say that it was all a question of 
reality; and that the point is that the writer 
shall suggest a reality to his reader, even 



302 At Large 

though the picture he evoked in the reader's 
mind was not the same as the picture in his 
own mind — but that is to me pure symbolism." 

" Exactly," said Herries, " and the more 
symbolical that art becomes, the purer it be- 
comes — that is precisely what I am aiming at." 

" Well," I said, ^' that gives me an oppor- 
tunity of making a confession. I have never 
really been able to understand what technical 
symbolism in art is. A symbol in the plain 
sense is something which recalls or suggests 
to you something else; and thus the whole of 
art is pure symbolism. The flick of colour 
gives you a distant woodland, the phrase gives 
you a scene or an emotion. Five printed 
words upon a page makes one suffer or re- 
joice imaginatively; and my idea of the most 
perfect art is not the art which gives one a 
sense of laborious finish, but the art in which 
you never think of the finish at all, but only 
of the thing described. The end of effort is 
to conceal effort, as the old adage says. 
Some people, I suppose, attain it through a 
series of misses; but the best art of all goes 
straight to the heart of the thing." 

" Yes," said Musgrave, " my own feeling is 



Literary Finish 303 

that the mistake is to consider it can only be 
done in one way. Each person has his own 
way ; but I agree in thinking that the best art 
is the most effortless." 

" From the point of view of the onlooker, 
perhaps," said Herries, " but not from the 
point of view of the craftsman. The pleasure 
of art, for the craftsman, is to see what the 
difficulty was, and to discern how the artist 
triumphed over it. Think of the delightful 
individual roughness of old work as opposed 
to modern machine-made things. There is an 
appropriate irregularity, according to the 
medium employed. The workmanship of a 
gem is not the same as that of a building; the 
essence of the gem is to be flawiess ; but in the 
building there is a pleasure in the tool-dints, 
like the pleasure of the rake-marks on the 
gravel path. Of course music must be flawless 
too — firm, resolute, inevitable, because the 
medium demands it; but in a big picture — 
why, the other day I saw a great oil-painting, 
a noble piece of art — I came upon it in the 
Academy, by a side door close upon it. The 
background was a great tangled mass of raw 
crude smears, more like coloured rags patched 



304 At Large 

together than paint; but a few paces off, the 
whole melted into a great river-valley, with 
deep water-meadows of summer grass and big 
clumps of trees. That is the perfect com- 
bination. The man knew exactly what he 
wanted — he got his effect — the structure was 
complete, and yet there was the added plea- 
sure of seeing how he achieved it. That is the 
kind of finish I desire." 

" Yes, of course," said Musgrave, " we should 
all agree about that; but my feeling would be 
that the way to do it is for the artist to fill 
himself to the brim with the subject, and to 
let it burst out. I do not at all believe in the 
painful pinching and pulling together of a 
particular bit of work. That sort of process 
is excellent practice, but it seems to me like 
the receipt in one of Edwin Lear's Nonsense 
Books for making some noisome dish, into 
which all sorts of ingredients of a loathsome 
kind were to be put; and the directions end 
with the words : ^ Serve up in a cloth, and 
throw all out of the window as soon as pos- 
sible.' It is an excellent thing to take all the 
trouble, if you throw it away when it is 
done; you will do your next piece of real work 



Literary Finish 305 

all the better; but for a piece of work to have 
the best kind of vitality, it must flow, I be- 
lieve, easily and sweetly from the teeming 
mind. Take such a book as Newman's Apolo- 
gia, written in a few weeks, a piece of per- 
fect art — but then it was written in tears." 

" But on the other hand," said I, " look at 
Ariosto's Orlando; it took ten years to write 
and sixteen more to correct — and there is not 
a forced or a languid line in the whole of it." 

" Yes," said Musgrave, " it is true, of course, 
that people must do things in their own way. 
But, on the whole, the best work is done in 
speed and glow, and derives from that swift 
handling a unity, a curve, that nothing else 
can give. What matters is to have a clear 
sense of structure, and that, at all events, 
cannot be secured by poky and fretful treat- 
ment. That is where intellectual grasp comes 
in. But, even so, it all depends upon what 
one likes, and I confess that I like large 
handling better than perfection of detail." 

" I believe," I said, " that we really all 
agree. We all believe in largeness and vital- 
ity as the essential qualities. But in the lesser 
kinds of art there is a delicacy and a perfec- 



3o6 At Large 

tion which are appropriate. An attention to 
minutiae which the graving of a gem or the 
making of a sonnet demands is out of place 
in a cathedral or an epic. We none of us 
would approve of hasty, slovenly, clumsy 
work anywhere; all that is to be demanded 
is that such irregularity as can be detected 
should not be inappropriate irregularity. 
What we disagree about is only the precise 
amount of finish which is appropriate to the 
particular work. Musgrave would hold, in 
the case of Flaubert, that he was, in his 
novels, trying to give to the cathedral the 
finish of the gem, and polishing a colossal 
statue as though it were a tiny statuette." 

" Yes," said Herries mournfully, " I sup- 
pose that is right; though when I read of 
Flaubert spending hours of torture in the 
search for a single epithet, I do not feel that 
the sacrifice was made in vain if only the re- 
sult was achieved." 

" But I," said Musgrave, " grudge the time 
so spent. I would rather have more less-fin- 
ished work than little exquisite work — though 
I suppose that we shall come to the latter 
sometime, when the treasures of art have ac- 



Literary Finish 307 

cumulated even more hopelessly than now, 
and when nothing but perfect work will have 
a chance of recognition. Then perhaps a man 
will spend thirty years in writing a short 
story, and twenty more in polishing it! But 
at present there is much that is unsaid which 
may well be said, and I confess that I do not 
hanker after this careful and troubled work. 
It reminds me of the terrible story of the 
Chinaman who spent fifty years in painting 
a vase which cracked in the furnace. It seems 
to me like the w^orst kind of waste." 

" And I, on the other hand," said Herries 
gravely, *^ think that such a life is almost as 
noble a one as I can well conceive." 

His words sounded to me like a kind of pon- 
tifical blessing pronounced at the end of a 
liturgical service; and, dinner now being over, 
we adjourned to the library. Then Musgrave 
entertained us with an account of a squabble 
he had lately had with a certain editor, who 
had commissioned him to write a set of pa- 
pers on literary subjects, and then had ob- 
jected to his treatment. Musgrave had 
trailed his coat before the unhappy man, laid 
traps for him by dint of asking him ingenuous 



3o8 At Large 

questions, had written an article elaborately 
constructed to parody derisively the editor's 
point of view, had meekly submitted it as one 
of the series, and then, when the harried 
wretch again objected, had confronted him with 
illustrative extracts from his own letters. It 
was a mirthful if not a wholly good-natured 
performance. Herries had listened with ill- 
concealed disgust, and excused himself at the 
end of the recital on the plea of work. 

As the door closed behind him, Musgrave 
said with a wink : '' I am afraid my story has 
rather disgusted our young transcendentalist. 
He has no pleasure in a wholesome row; he 
thinks the whole thing vulgar — and I believe 
he is probably right; but I can't live on his 
level, though I am sure it is very fine and all 
that." 

" But what do you really think of his 
work ? " I said. " It is very promising, is n't 
it?" 

" Yes," said Musgrave reflectively, " that is 
just what it is — he has got a really fine lit- 
erary gift; but he is too uncompromising. 
Idealism in art is a deuced fine thing, and 
every now and then there comes a man who 



Literary Finish 309 

can keep it up, and can afford to do so. But 
what Herries does not understand is that 
there are two sides to art — the theory and the 
practice. It is just the same with a lot of 
things — education, for instance, and religion. 
But the danger is that the theorists become 
pedantic. They get entirely absorbed in 
questions of form, and the plain truth is that 
however good your form is, you have got to 
get hold of your matter too. The point after 
all is the application of art to life, and you 
have got to condescend. Things of which the 
ultimate end is to affect human beings must 
take human beings into account. If you aim 
at appealing only to other craftsmen, it be- 
comes an erudite business: you become like a 
carpenter who makes things which are of no 
use except to win the admiration of other car- 
penters. Of course it may be worth doing if 
you are content with indicating a treatment 
which other people can apply and popularise. 
But if you isolate art into a theory which has 
no application to life, you are a savant and 
not an artist. You can't be an artist without 
being a man, and therefore I hold that hu- 
manity comes first. I don't mean that one 



3IO At Large 

need be vulgar. Of course I am a mere pro- 
fessional, and my primary aim is to earn an 
honest livelihood. I frankly confess that I 
don't pose, even to myself, as a public bene- 
factor. But Herries does not care either about 
an income, or about touching other people. 
Of course I should like to raise the standard. 
I should like to see ordinary people capable of 
perceiving what is good art, and not so wholly 
at the mercy of conventional and melodra- 
matic art. But Herries does not care two- 
pence about that. He is like the Calvinist 
who is sure of his own salvation, has his doubts 
about the minister, and thinks every one else 
irreparably damned. As I say, it is a lofty 
sort of ideal, but it is not a good sign when 
that sort of thing begins. The best art of the 
world — let us say Homer, Virgil, Dante, 
Shakespeare — was contributed by people who 
probably did not think about it as art at all. 
Fancy Homer going in for questions of form! 
It is always, I believe, a sign of decadence 
when formalism begins. It is just like re- 
ligion, which starts with a teacher who has 
an overwhelming sense of the beauty of ho- 
liness; and then that degenerates into theo- 



Literary Finish 311 

logy. These young men are to art what the 
theologians are to religion. They lose sight 
of the object of the whole thing in codifica- 
tion and definition. My own idea of a great 
artist is a man who finds beauty so hopelessly 
attractive and desirable that he can't restrain 
his speech. It all has to come out; he cannot 
hold his peace. And then a number of people 
begin to see that it was what they had been 
vaguely admiring and desiring all the time; 
and then a few highly intellectual people think 
that they can analyse it, and produce the same 
effects by applying their analysis. It can't be 
done so ; art must have a life of its own." 

'^ Yes," I said, " I think you are right. 
Herries is ascetic and eremitical — a beautiful 
thing in many ways; but there is no trans- 
mission of life in such art; it is a sterile thing 
after all, a seedless flower." 

^' Let us express the vulgar hope," said Mus- 
grave, " that he may fall in love ; that will 
bring him to his moorings! And now," he 
added, " we will go to the music-room and I 
will see if I cannot tempt the shy bird from 
his roost." And so we did — Musgrave is an 
excellent musician. We flung the windows 



312 At Large 

open; he embarked upon a great Bach "Toc- 
cata " ; and before many bars were over, our 
idealist crept softly into the room, with an 
air of apologetic forgiveness. 



XIV 
A Midsummer Day's Dream 

I SUPPOSE that every one knows by experi- 
ence how certain days in one's life have a 
power of standing out in the memory, even in 
a tract of pleasant days, all lit by a particular 
brightness of joy. One does not always know 
at the time that the day is going to be so 
crowned; but the weeks pass on, and the one 
little space of sunlight, between dawn and 
eve, has orbed itself 

" into the perfect star 
We saw not, when we moved therein." 

The thing that in my own case most tends to 
produce this " grace of congruity," as the 
schoolmen say, is the presence of the right com- 
panion, and it is no less important that he 
should be in the right mood. Sometimes the 
right companion is tiresome when he should be 
gracious, or boisterous when he should be 
313 



314 At Large 

quiet; but when he is iu the right mood, he is 
like a familiar and sympathetic guide on a 
mountain peak. He helps one at tlie right 
point; his desire to push on or to stop coin- 
cides with one's own; he is not a hired assist- 
ant, but a brotherly comrade. On the day that 
I am thinking of I had just such a companion. 
He was cheerful, accessible, good-humoured. 
He followed when I wanted to lead, he led 
when I was glad to follow. He was not 
ashamed of being unaffectedly emotional, and 
he was not vaporous or quixotically sentiment- 
al. He did not want to argue, or to hunt an 
idea to death; and we had the supreme delight 
of long silences, during which our thoughts led 
us to the same point, the truest test that there 
is some subtle electrical affinity at work, mov- 
ing viewlessly between heart and brain. 

What no doubt heightened the pleasure for 
me was that I had been passing through a 
somewhat dreary period. Things had been 
going wrong, had tied themselves into knots. 
Several people whose fortunes had been bound 
up with my own had been acting perversely 
and unreasonably — at least I chose to think 
so. My own work had come to a standstill. 



A Midsummer Day's Dream 315 

I had pushed on perhaps too fast, and I had 
got into a bare sort of moorland tract of life, 
and could not discern the path in the heather. 
There did not seem any particular task for me 
to undertake; the people whom it was my 
business to help, if I could, seemed unac- 
countably and aggravatingly prosperous and 
independent. Not only did no one seem to 
want my opinion, but I did not feel that I had 
any opinions worth delivering. Who does not 
know the frame of mind? When life seems 
rather an objectless business, and one is 
tempted just to let things slide; when energy 
is depleted, and the springs of hope are low; 
when one feels like the family in one of Mrs. 
Walford's books, who all go out to dinner to- 
gether, and of whom the only fact that is re- 
lated is that ^' nobody wanted them.'' So 
fared it with my soul. 

But that morning, somehow, the delicious 
sense had returned, of its own record, of a 
beautiful quality in common things. I had 
sought it in vain for weeks; it had behaved as 
a cat behaves, the perverse, soft, pretty, in- 
different creature. It had stared blankly at 
my beckoning hand; it had gambolled away 



3i6 At Large 

into the bushes when I strove to capture it, 
and looked out at me when I desisted with in- 
nocent grey eyes; and now it had suddenly 
returned uncalled, to caress me as though 1 
had been a long-lost friend, diligently and 
anxiously sought for in vain. That morning 
the very scent of breakfast being prepared 
came to my nostrils like the smoke of a sacri- 
fice in my honour; the shape and hue of the 
flowers were full of gracious mystery; the 
green pasture seemed a place where a middle- 
aged man might almost venture to dance. The 
sharp chirping of the birds in the shrubbery 
seemed a concert arranged for my ear. We 
were soon astir. Like Wordsworth we said 
that this one day we would give to idleness, 
though the profane might ask to what that 
leisurely poet consecrated the rest of his days. 
We found ourselves deposited, by a brisk 
train — the very stoker seemed to be engaged 
in the joyful conspiracy — at the little town of 
St. Ives. I should like to expatiate upon the 
charms of St. Ives, its clear, broad, rush- 
fringed river, its quaint brick houses, with 
their little wharf -gar dens, where the trailing 
nasturtium mirrors itself in the slow flood. 



A Midsummer Day's Dream 317 

its embayed bridge, with the ancient chapel 
buttressed over the stream — but I must hold 
my hand; I must not linger over the beauties 
of the City of Destruction, which I have every 
reason to believe was a very picturesque place, 
when our hearts were set on pilgrimage. Suf- 
fice it to say that we walked along a pretty 
riverside causeway, under enlacing limes, past 
the fine church, under the hanging woods of 
Houghton Hill — and here we found a mill, a 
big, timbered place, with a tiled roof, odd gal- 
leries and projecting pent-houses, all pleas- 
antly dusted with flour, where a great wheel 
turned dripping in a fern-clad cavern of its 
own, with the scent of the weedy river-water 
blown back from the plunging leat. Oh, the 
joyful place of streams! River and leat and 
back-w^ater here ran clear among willow-clad 
islands, all fringed deep with meadow-sweet 
and comfrey and butterbur and melilot. The 
sun shone overhead among big, white, racing 
clouds; the fish poised in mysterious pools 
among trailing water- weeds; and there was 
soon no room in my heart for anything but the 
joy of earth and the beauty of it. What did 
the weary days before and behind matter? 



3i8 At Large 

What did casuistry and determinism and fate 
and the purpose of life concern us then, my 
friend and me? As little as they concerned 
the gnats that danced so busily in the golden 
light, at the corner where the alder dipped 
her red rootlets to drink the brimming stream. 
There we chartered a boat, and all that hot 
forenoon rowed lazily on, the oars grunting 
and dripping, the rudder clicking softly 
through avenues of reeds and water-plants, 
from reach to reach, from pool to pool. Here 
we had a glimpse of the wide-watered valley 
rich in grass, here of silent woods, up-piled in 
the distance, over which quivered the hot sum- 
mer air. Here a herd of cattle stood knee-deep 
in the shallow water, lazily twitching their 
tails and snuffing at the stream. The birds 
were silent now in the glowing noon; only the 
reeds shivered and bowed. There, beside a 
lock with its big, battered timbers, the water 
poured green and translucent through a half- 
shut sluice. Now and then the springs of 
thought brimmed over in a few quiet words, 
that came and passed like a breaking bubble — 
but for the most part we were silent, content 
to converse with nod or smile. And so we 



A Midsummer Day's Dream 319 

came at last to our goal; a house embowered 
in leaves, a churchyard beside the water, and 
a church that seemed to have almost crept to 
the brink to see itself mirrored in the stream. 
The place mortals call Hemingford Grey, but 
it had a new name for me that day which I 
cannot even spell — for the perennial difficulty 
that survives a hundred disenchantments, is to 
feel that a romantic hamlet seen thus on a 
day of pilgrimage, with its clustering roofs 
and chimneys, its waterside lawns, is a real 
place at all. I suppose that people there live 
dull and simple lives enough, buy and sell, 
gossip and back-bite, wed and die; but for the 
pilgrim it seems an enchanted place, where 
there can be no care or sorrow, nothing hard, 
or unlovely, or unclean, but a sort of fairy- 
land, where men seem to be living the true and 
beautiful life of the soul, of which we are al- 
ways in search, but which seems to be so 
strangely hidden away. It must have been for 
me and my friend that the wise and kindly 
artist who lives there in a paradise of flowers, 
had filled his trellises with climbing roses, and 
bidden the tall larkspurs raise their azure 
spires in the air. How else had he brought 



320 At Large 



it all to such perfection for that golden hour? 
Perhaps he did not even guess that he had 
done it all for my sake, which made it so much 
more gracious a gift. And then we learned 
too from a little red-bound volume which I 
had thought before was a guide-book, but 
which turned out to-day to be a volume of the 
Book of Life, that the whole place was alive 
with the calling of old voices. At the little 
church there across the meadows the portly, 
tender-hearted, generous Charles James Fox 
had wedded his bride. Here, in the pool be- 
low, Cowper's dog had dragged out for him the 
yellow water-lily that he could not reach; and 
in the church itself was a little slab where two 
tiny maidens sleep, the sisters of the famous 
Miss Gunnings, who set all hearts ablaze by 
their beauty, who married dukes and earls, and 
had spent their sweet youth in a little ruined 
manor-house hard by. I wonder whether after 
all the two little girls, who died in the time of 
roses, had not the better part ; and whether the 
great Duchess, who showed herself so haughty 
to poor Boswell, when he led his great danc- 
ing Bear through the grim North, did not 
think sometimes in her state of the childish 



A Midsummer Day's Dream 321 

sisters with whom she had played, before they 
came to be laid in the cool chancel beside the 
slow stream. 

And then we sat down for a little on the 
churchyard wall, and watched the water- 
grasses trail and the fish poise. In that sweet 
corner of the churchyard, at a certain season 
of the year, grow white violets; they had 
dropped their blooms long ago; but they were 
just as much alive as when they were speak- 
ing aloud to the world with scent and colour ; I 
can never think of flowers and trees as not in 
a sense conscious; I believe all life to be con- 
scious of itself, and I am sure that the flower- 
ing time is the happy time for flowers as much 
as it is for artists. 

Close to us here was a wall, with a big, solid 
Georgian house peeping over, blinking with its 
open windows and sun-blinds on to a smooth, 
shaded lawn, full of green glooms and leafy 
shelters. Why did it all give one such a sense 
of happiness and peace, even though one had 
no share in it, even though one knew that one 
would be treated as a rude and illegal intruder 
if one stepped across and used it as one's own ? 

This is a difficult tffing to analyse. It all 

as 



322 At Large 

lies in the imagination; one thinks of a long 
perspective of sunny afternoons, of leisurely 
people sitting out in chairs under the big 
sycamore, reading perhaps, or talking quietly, 
or closing the book to think, the memory re- 
telling some old and pretty tale; and then 
perhaps some graceful girl comes out of the 
house with a world of hopes and innocent de- 
sires in her wide-open eyes; or a tall and 
limber boy saunters out bare-headed and flan- 
nelled, conscious of life and health, and steps 
down to the punt that lies swinging at its 
chain — one hears it rattle as it is untied and 
flung into the prow; and then the dripping 
pole is plunged and raised, and the punt goes 
gliding away, through zones of glimmering 
light and shadow, to the bathing-pool. All 
that comes into one's mind; one takes life, and 
subtracts from it all care and anxiety, all the 
shadow of failure and suffering, sees it as it 
might be, and finds it good. That is the first 
element of the charm. And then there comes 
into the picture a further and more reflective 
charm, that which Tennyson called the pas- 
sion of the past; the thought that all this 
beautiful life is slipping away, even as it 



A Midsummer Day's Dream 323 

forms itself, that one cannot stay it for an 
instant, but that the shadow creeps across the 
dial, and the church-clock tells the hours of 
the waning day. It is a mistake to think that 
such a sense comes of age and experience; it is 
rather the other way, for never is the regretful 
sense of the fleeting quality of things realised 
with greater poignancy than when one is young. 
When one grows older one begins to expect 
a good deal of dissatisfaction and anxiety to 
be mingled with it all; one finds the old Hora- 
tian maxim becoming true: 

" Vitae summa brevis nos spem vitat inchoare 
longam," 

and one learns to be grateful for the sunny 
hour ; but when one is young, one feels so capa- 
ble of enjoying it all, so impatient of shadow 
and rain, that one cannot bear that the sweet 
wine of life should be diluted. 

That is, I believe, the analysis of the charm 
of such a scene: the possibility of joy, and 
permanence, tinged with the pathos that it has 
no continuance, but rises and falls and fades 
like a ripple in the stream. 

The disillusionment of experience is a very 



324 At Large 

different thing from the pathos of youth; for 
in youth the very sense of pathos is in itself an 
added luxury of joy, giving it a delicate beauty 
which, if it were not so evanescent, it could 
not possess. 

But then comes the real trouble, the heavy 
anxiety, the illness, the loss; and those things, 
which looked so romantic in the pages of poets 
and the scenes of story- writers, turn out not 
to be romantic at all, but frankly and plainly 
disagreeable and intolerable things. The boy 
who swept down the shining reaches with 
long, deft strokes becomes a man — money runs 
short, his children give him anxiety, his wife 
becomes ailing and fretful, he has a serious 
illness; and when after a day of pain he limps 
out in the afternoon to the shadow of the old 
plane-tree, he must be a very wise and tranquil 
and patient man, if he can still feel to the 
full the sweet influences of the place, and be 
still absorbed and comforted by them. 

And here lies the weakness of the epicurean 
and artistic attitude, that it assorts so ill with 
the harder and grimmer facts of life. Life 
has a habit of twitching away the artistic chair 
.with all its cushions from under one, with a 



A Midsummer Day's Dream 325 

rude suddenness, so that one has, if one is wise, 
to learn a mental agility and to avoid the temp- 
tation of drowsing in the land where it is 
alwa} s afternoon. The real attitude is to be 
able to play a robust and manful part in the 
world, and yet to be able to banish the thought 
of the bank-book and the ledger from the mind, 
and to submit oneself to the sweet influences 
of summer and sun. 

" He who of such delights can judge, and spare 
To interpose them oft is not unwise." 

So sang the old Puritan poet; and there is a 
large wisdom in the word oft which I have 
abundantly envied, being myself an anxious- 
minded man! 

The solution is halance — not to think that 
the repose of art is all, and jet on the other 
hand not to believe that life is always jog- 
ging and hustling one. The way in which one 
can test one's progress is by considering 
whether activities and tiresome engagements 
are beginning to fret one unduly, for if so one 
is becoming a hedonist; and on the other hand 
by being careful to observe whether one be- 
comes incapable of taking a holiday; if one 



326 At Large 

becomes bored and restless and hipped in a 
cessation of activities, then one is suffering 
from the disease of Martha in the Gospel story ; 
and of the two sisters we may remember that 
Martha was the one who incurred a public 
rebuke. 

What one has to try to perceive is that life 
is designed not wholly for discomfort or 
wholly for ease, but that we are here as learn- 
ers, one and all. Sometimes the lesson comes 
whispering through the leaves of the plane- 
tree, with the scent of violets in the air; 
sometimes it comes in the words and glances 
of a happy circle full of eager talk, sometimes 
through the pages of a wise book, and some- 
times in grim hours, when one tosses sleepless 
on one's bed under the pressure of an intoler- 
able thought — ^but in each and every case we 
do best when we receive the lesson as willingly 
and large-heartedly as we can. 

Perhaps, in some of my writings, those who 
have read them have thought that I have un- 
duly emphasised the brighter, sweeter, more 
tranquil side of life. I have done so deliber- 
ately, because I believe that we should follow 
innocent joy as far as we can. But it is not 



A Midsummer Day's Dream 327 

because I am unaware of the other side. I do 
not think that any of the windings of the dark 
wood of which Dante speaks are unknown to 
me, and there are few tracts of dreariness that 
I have not trodden reluctantly. I have had 
physical health and much seeming prosperity; 
but to be acutely sensitive to the pleasures of 
happiness and peace is generally to be mor- 
bidly sensitive to the burden of cares. Un- 
happiness is a subjective thing. As Mrs. 
Gummidge so truly said, when she was re- 
minded that other people had their troubles, 
" I feel them more." And if I have upheld the 
duty of seeking peace, it has been like a 
preacher who preaches most urgently against 
his own bosom-sins. But I am sure of this, 
that however impatiently one mourns one's 
fault and desires to be different, the secret of 
growth lies in that very sorrow, perhaps in 
the seeming impotence of that sorrow. What 
one must desire is to learn the truth, however 
much one may shudder at it; and the longer 
that one persists in one's illusions, the longer 
is one's learning-time. Is it not a bitter com- 
fort to know that the truth is there, and that 
what we believe or do not believe about it 



328 At Large 

makes no difference at all? Yes, I think it is 
a comfort; at all events upon that foundation 
alone is it possible to rest. 

How far one drifts in thought away from 
the sweet scene which grows sweeter every 
hour. The heat of the day is over now; the 
breeze curls on the stream, the shadow of the 
tower falls far across the water. My com- 
panion rises and smiles, thinking me lost in 
indolent content; he hardly guesses how far I 
have been voyaging 

" On strange seas of thought alone." 

Does he guess that as I look back over my life, 
pain has so far preponderated over happiness 
that I would not, if I could, live it again, and 
that I would not in truth, if I could choose, 
have lived it at all? And yet, even so, I re- 
cognise that I am glad not to have the choice, 
for it would be made in an indolent and timid 
spirit, and I do indeed believe that the end is 
not yet, and that the hour will assuredly come 
when I shall rejoice to have lived, and see the 
meaning even of my fears. 

And then we retrace our way, and like the 
Lady of Shalott step down into the boat, to 



A Midsummer Day's Dream 329 

glide along the darkling water-way in the 
westering light. Why cannot I speak to my 
friend of such dark things as these? It would 
be better perhaps if I could, and yet no hand 
can help us to bear our own burden. 

But the dusk comes slowly on, merging reed 
and pasture and gliding stream in one indis- 
tinguishable shade; the trees stand out black 
against the sunset, thickening to an emerald 
green. A star comes out over the dark hill, 
the lights begin to peep out in the windows of 
the clustering town as we draw nearer. As we 
glide beneath the dark houses, with their 
gables and chimneys dark against the glowing 
sky, how everything that is dull and trivial 
and homely is blotted out by the twilight, leav- 
ing nothing but a sense of romantic beauty, of 
mysterious peace! The little town becomes 
an enchanted city full of heroic folk ; the figure 
that leans silently over the bridge to see us 
pass, to what high-hearted business is he 
vowed, burgher or angel? A spell is woven of 
shadow and falling light, and of chimes float- 
ing over meadow and stream. Yet this sense 
of something remotely and unutterably beau- 
tiful, this transfiguration of life, is as real 



330 At Large 

and vital an experience as the daily, dreary 
toil, and to be welcomed as such. Nay, more! 
it is better, because it gives one a deepened 
sense of value, of significance, of eternal great- 
ness, to which we must cling as firmly as we 
may, because it is there that the final secret 
lies; not in the poor struggles, the anxious de- 
lays which are but the incidents of the voyage, 
and not the serene life of haven and home. 



XV 

Symbols 

THE present time is an era when intellect- 
ual persons are ashamed of being credu- 
lous. It is the perfectly natural and desirable 
result of the working of the scientific spirit. 
Everything is relentlessly investigated, the 
enormous structure of natural law is being 
discovered to underlie all the most surprising, 
djelicate, and apparently fortuitous processes, 
and no one can venture to forecast where the 
systematisation will end. The result is a great 
inrush of bracing and invigorating candour. 
It is not that our liberty or reflection and ac- 
tion is increased. It is rather increasingly 
limited. But at least we are growing to dis- 
cern where our boundaries are, and it is deeply 
refreshing to find that the boundaries erected 
by humanity are much closer and more cramp- 
ing than the boundaries determined by God. 
We are no longer bound by human authority, 

331 



33 2 At Large 

by subjective theories, by petty tradition. We 
are no longer required to tremble before 
thaumaturgy and conjuring and occultism. It 
is true that science has hitherto confined itself 
mainly to the investigation of concrete pheno- 
mena; but the same process is sure to be 
applied to metaphysics, to sociology, to 
psychology; and the day will assuredly come 
when the human race will analyse the laws 
which govern progress, which regulate the ex- 
act development of religion and morality. 

The demolition of credulity is, as I have 
said, a wholly desirable and beneficial thing. 
Most intelligent people have found some hap- 
piness in learning that the dealings of God 
— that is, the creative and originative power 
behind the universe — are at all events not 
whimsical, however unintelligible they may be. 
No one at all events is now required to recon- 
cile with his religious faith a detailed belief 
in the Mosaic cosmogony, or to accept the fact 
that a Hebrew prophet was enabled to summon 
bears from a wood to tear to pieces some un- 
happy boys who found food for mirth in his 
personal appearance. That is a pure gain. 
But side by side with this entirely wholesome 



Symbols 333 

process, there are a good many people who 
have thrown overboard, together with their 
credulity, a quality of a far higher and nobler 
kind, which may be called faith. Men who 
have seen many mysteries explained, and many 
dark riddles solved in nature, have fallen into 
what is called materialism, from the mistaken 
idea that the explanation of material pheno- 
mena will hold good for the discernment of 
abstract phenomena. Yet any one who ap- 
proaches the results of scientific investigation 
in a philosophical and a poetical spirit, sees 
clearly enough that nothing has been attempted 
but analysis, and that the mystery which sur- 
rounds us is only thrust a little further off, 
while the darkness is as impenetrable and 
profound as ever. All that we have learnt is 
how natural law works; we have not come 
near to learning why it works as it does. All 
we have really acquired is a knowledge that 
the audacious and unsatisfactory theories, 
such for instance as the old-fashioned scheme 
of redemption, by which men have attempted 
with a pathetic hopefulness to justify the ways 
of God to man, are, and are bound to be, de- 
spairingly incomplete. The danger of the 



334 At Large 

scientific spirit is not that it is too agnostic, 
but that it is not agnostic enough : it professes 
to account for everything when it only has a 
very few of the data in its grasp. The ma- 
terialistic philosophy tends to be a tyranny 
which menaces liberty of thought. Every 
one has a right to deduce what theory he can 
from his own experience. The one thing that 
we have no sort of right to do is to enforce 
that theory upon people whose experience does 
not confirm it. We may invite them to act 
upon our assumptions, but we must not blame 
them if they end by considering them to be 
baseless. I was talking the other day to an 
ardent Roman Catholic, who described by a 
parable the light in which he viewed the au- 
thority of the Church. He said that it was 
as if he were half-way up a hill, prevented 
from looking over into a hidden valley by the 
slope of the ground. On the hill-top, he said, 
might be supposed to stand people in whose 
good faith and accuracy of vision he had com- 
plete confidence. If they described to him 
what they saw in the valley beyond, he would 
not dream of mistrusting them. But the 
analogy breaks down at every point, because 



Symbols 335 

the essence of it is that every one who reached 
the hill-top would inevitably see the same 
scene. Yet in the case of religion, the hill- 
top is crowded by people, whose good faith is 
equally incontestable, but whose descriptions 
of what lies beyond are at hopeless variance. 
Moreover all alike confess that the impressions 
they derive are outside the possibility of scien- 
tific or intellectual tests, and that it is all a 
matter of inference depending upon a subjec- 
tive consent in the mind of the discerner to 
accept what is incapable of proof. The 
strength of the scientific position is that the 
scientific observer is in the presence of pheno- 
mena confirmed by innumerable investigations, 
and that, up to a certain point, the operation 
of a law has been ascertained, which no rea- 
sonable man has any excuse for doubting. 
Whenever that law conflicts with religious 
assumptions, which in any case cannot be 
proved to be more than subjective assumptions, 
the unverifiable theory must go down before 
the verifiable. Religion may assume, for in- 
stance, that life is an educative process; but 
that theory cannot be considered proved in the 
presence of the fact that many human beings 



Z2>6 At Large 

close their eyes upon the world before they 
are capable of exercising any moral or intel- 
lectual choice whatever. 

It may prove, upon investigation, that all 
religious theories and all creeds are nothing 
more than the desperate and pathetic attempts 
of humanity, conscious of an instinctive horror 
of suffering, and of an inalienable sense of 
their right to happiness, to provide a solution 
for the appalling fact that many human be- 
ings seem created only to suffer and to be un- 
happy. The mystery is a very dark one; and 
philosophy is still not within reach of ex- 
plaining how it is that a sense of justice should 
be implanted in man by the Power that ap- 
pears so often to violate that conception of 
justice. 

The fact is that the progress of science has 
created an immense demand for the quality of 
faith and hopefulness, by revealing so much 
that is pessimistic in the operation of natural 
law. If we are to live with any measure of 
contentment or tranquillity, we must acquire 
a confidence that God has not, as science 
tends to indicate, made all men for nought. 
We must, if we can, acquire some sort of hope 



Symbols 337 

that it is not in mere wantonness and indif- 
ference that He confronts us with the neces- 
sity for bearing the things that He has made 
us most to dread. It may be easy enough for 
robustj vigorous, contented persons to believe 
that God means us well ; but the only solution 
that is worth anything is a solution that shall 
give us courage, patience, and even joy, at 
times when everything about us seems to speak 
of cruelty and error and injustice. One of 
the things that has ministered comfort in 
large measure to souls so afflicted is the power 
of tracing a certain beauty and graciousness in 
the phenomena that surround us. Who is 
there who in moments of bewildered sorrow 
has not read a hint of some vast lovingness, 
moving dimly in the background of things, in 
the touch of familiar hands or in the glances 
of dear eyes? Surely, they have said to them- 
selves, if love is the deepest, strongest, and 
most lasting force in the world, the same 
quality must be hidden deepest in the Heart 
of God. This is the unique strength of the 
Christian revelation, the thought of the Father- 
hood of God, and His tender care for all that 
he has made. Again, who is there who in de- 



33^ At Large 

pression and anxiety has not had his load 
somewhat lightened by the sight of the fresh 
green of spring foliage against a blue sky^ by 
the colour and scent of flowers, by the sweet 
melody of musical chords? The aching spirit 
has said, " They are there — beauty, and peace, 
and joy — if I could but find the way to them.'^ 
Who has not had his fear of death alleviated 
by the happy end of some beloved life, when 
the dear one has made as it were, solemn haste 
to be gone, falling gently into slumber? Who 
is there, who, speeding homewards in the sun- 
set, has seen the dusky orange veil of flying 
light drawn softly westward over misty fields, 
where the old house stands up darkling among 
the glimmering pastures, and has not felt the 
presence of some sweet secret waiting for him 
beyond the gates of life, and death? All these 
things are symbols, because the emotions they 
arouse are veritably there, as indisputable a 
phenomenon as any fact which science has 
analysed. The miserable mistake that many 
intellectual people make is to disregard what 
they would call vague emotions in the pres- 
ence of scientific truth. Yet such emotions 
have a far more intimate concern for us than 



Symbols 339 

the dim sociology of bees, or the concentrio 
forces of the stars. Our emotioms are far 
more true and vivid experiences for us than 
indisputable laws of nature which never 
cut the line of our life at all. We may wish, 
perhaps, that the laws of such emotions were 
analysed and systematised too, for it is a very 
timid and faltering spirit that thinks that 
definiteness is the same as profanation. We 
may depend upon it that the deeper we can 
probe into such secrets, the richer will our 
conceptions of life and God become. 

The mistake that is so often made by relig- 
ious organisations, which depend so largely 
upon symbolism, is the terrible limiting of 
this symbolism to traditional ceremonies and 
venerable ritual. It has been said that re- 
ligion is the only form of poetry accessible to 
the poor; and it is true in the sense that any- 
thing which hallows and quickens the most 
normal and simple experiences of lives di- 
vorced from intellectual and artistic influences 
is a very real and true kind of symbolism. It 
may be well to give people such symbolism as 
they can understand, and the best symbols of 
all are those that deal with the commonest 



340 At Large 

emotions. But it is a lean wisdom that em- 
phasises a limited range of emotions at the 
expense of a larger range; and the spirit 
which limits the sacred influences of religion 
to particular buildings and particular rites is 
very far removed from the spirit of Him who 
said that neither at Gerizim nor in Jerusalem 
was the Father to be worshipped, but in spirit 
and in truth. At the same time the natural 
impatience of one who discerns a symbolism 
all about him, in tree and flower, in sunshine 
and rain, and who hates to see the range re- 
stricted, is a feeling that a wise and tolerant 
man ought to resist. It is ill to break the 
pitcher because the well is at hand ! One does 
not make a narrow soul broader by breaking 
down its boundaries, but by revealing the 
beauty of the further horizon. Even the false 
feeling of compassion must be resisted. A 
child is more encouraged by listening patiently 
to its tale of tiny exploits, than by casting 
ridicule upon them. 

But on the other hand it is a wholly false 
timidity for one who has been brought up to 
love and reverence the narrower range of sym- 
bols, to choke and stifle the desires that stir 



Symbols 341 

in his heart for the wider range, out of defer- 
ence to authority and custom. One must not 
discard a cramping garment until one has a 
freer one to take its place; but to continue 
in the confining robe with the larger lying 
ready to one's hand, from a sense of false 
pathos and unreasonable loyalty, is a piece of 
foolishness. 

There are, I believe, hundreds of men and 
women now alive who have outgrown their 
traditional faith, through no fault of their 
own; but who out of terror at the vague men- 
aces of interested and Pharisaical persons do 
not dare to break away. One must of course 
weigh carefully whether one values comfort 
or liberty most. But what I would say is that 
it is of the essence of a faith to be elastic, to 
be capable of development, to be able to em- 
brace the forward movement of thought. 
Now so far am I from wishing to suggest that 
we have outgrown Christianity, that I would 
assert that we have not yet mastered its 
simplest principles. I believe with all my 
soul that it is still able to embrace the most 
daring scientific speculations, for the simple 
reason that it is hardly concerned with them 



342 At Large 

at all. Where religious faith conflicts with 
science is in the tenacity with which it holds 
to the literal truth of the miraculous occur- 
rences related in the Scriptures. Some of 
these present no difiSculty, some appear to 
be scientifically incredible. Yet these latter 
seem to me to be but the perfectly natural con- 
temporary setting of the faith, and not to be 
of the essence of Christianity at all. Miracles, 
whether they are true or not, are at all events 
unverifiable, and no creed that claims to de- 
pend upon the acceptance of unverifiable events 
can have any vitality. But the personality, 
the force, the perception of Christ himself 
emerges with absolute distinctness from the 
surrounding details. We may not be in a 
position to check exactly what He said and 
what He did not say, but just as no reasonable 
man can hold that He was merely an imagi- 
native conception invented by people who ob- 
viously did not understand Him, so the general 
drift of His teaching is absolutely clear and 
convincing. 

What I would have those do who can pro- 
fess themselves sincerely convinced Christians, 
in spite of the uncertainty of many of the 



Symbols 343 

recorded details, is to adopt a simple com- 
promise ; to claim their part in the inheritance 
of Christ, and the symbols of His mysteries, 
but not to feel themselves bound by any ec- 
clesiastical tradition. No one can forbid, by 
peevish regulations, direct access to the spirit 
of Christ and to the love of God. Christ's 
teaching was a purely individualistic teach- 
ing, based upon conduct and emotion, and 
half the difficulties of the position lie in His 
sanction and guidance having been claimed 
for what is only a human attempt to organise 
a society with a due deference for the secular 
spirit, its aims and ambitions. The sincere 
Christian should, I believe, gratefully receive 
the simple and sweet symbols of unity and 
forgiveness ; but he should make his own a far 
higher and wider range of symbols, the sym- 
bols of natural beauty and art and literature 
— all the passionate dreams of peace and emo- 
tion that have thrilled the yearning hearts of 
men. Wherever those emotions have led men 
along selfish, cruel, sensual paths, they must 
be ditrusted, just as we must distrust the re- 
ligious emotions which have sanctioned such 
divergences from the spirit of Christ. We 



344 At Large 

must believe that the essence of religion is to 
make us alive to the love of God, in whatever 
writing of light and air, of form and fra- 
grance it is revealed; and we must further be- 
lieve that religion is meant to guide and 
quicken the tender, compassionate, brotherly 
emotions, by which we lean to each other in 
this world where so much is dark. But to 
denounce the narrower forms of religion, or 
to abstain from them, is utterly alien to the 
spirit of Christ. He obeyed and reverenced 
the law, though He knew that the expanding 
spirit of His own teaching would break it in 
pieces. Of course, since liberty is the spirit 
of the Gospel, a liberty conditioned by the 
sense of equality, there may be occasion^ 
when a man is bound to resist what appears 
to him to be a moral or an intellectual tyranny. 
But short of that, the only thing of which one 
must beware is a conscious insincerity; and 
the limits of that a man must determine for 
himself. There are occasions when considera- 
tion for the feelings of others seems to con- 
flict with one's own sense of sincerity; but 1 
think that one is seldom wrong in preferring 
consideration for others to the personal in- 
dulgence of one's own apparent sincerity. 



Symbols 345 

Peace and gentleness always prevail in the 
end over vehemence and violence, and a peace- 
ful revolution brings about happier results for 
a country, as we have good reason to know, 
than a revolution of force. Even now the 
narrower religious systems prevail more in 
virtue of the gentleness and goodwill and per- 
suasion of their ministers than through the 
spiritual terrors that they wield — the thun- 
ders are divorced from the lightning. 

Thus may the victories of faith be won, not 
by noise and strife, but by the silent motion of 
a resistless tide. Even now it creeps softly 
over the sand and brims the stagnant pools 
with the freshening and invigorating brine. 

But in the worship of the symbol there is 
one deep danger; and that is that if one rests 
upon it, if one makes one's home in the palace 
of beauty or philosophy or religion, one has 
failed in the quest. It is the pursuit not of 
the unattained but of the unattainable to 
which we are vowed. Nothing but the unat- 
tainable can draw us onward. It is rest that 
is forbidden. We are pilgrims yet; and if, in- 
toxicated and bemused by beauty or emotion 
or religion, we make our dwelling there, it is 
as though we slept in the enchanted ground. 



346 At Large 

Enough is given us, and no more, to keep us 
moving forwards. To be satisfied is to slum- 
ber. The melancholy that follows hard in 
the footsteps of art, the sadness haunting the 
bravest music, the aching, troubled longing 
that creeps into the mind at the sight of the 
fairest scene, is but the warning presence of 
the guide that travels with us and fears that 
we may linger. Who has not seen across a 
rising ground the gables of the old house, the 
church tower, dark among the bare boughs of 
the rookery in a smiling sunset, and half lost 
himself at the thought of the impossibly beau- 
tiful life that might be lived there? To-day, 
just when the western sun began to tinge the 
floating clouds with purple and gold, I saw by 
the roadside an old labourer, fork on back, 
plodding heavily across a plough-land all 
stippled with lines of growing wheat. Hard 
by a windmill whirled its clattering arms. 
How I longed for something that would ren- 
der permanent the scene, sight, and sound 
alike. It told me somehow that the end was 
not yet. What did it stand for? I hardly 
know; for life, slow and haggard with toil, 
hard-won sustenance, all overhung with the 



Symbols 347 

crimson glories of waning light, the wet road 
itself catching the golden hues of heaven. A 
little later, passing bj the great pauper asy 
lum that stands up so naked among the bare 
fields, I looked over a hedge, and there, behind 
the engine-house with its heaps of scoriae and 
rubbish, lay a little trim ugly burial-ground, 
with a dismal mortuary, upon which some pa- 
thetic and tawdry taste had been spent. 
There in rows lay the mouldering bones of the 
failures of life and old sin; not even a head- 
stone over each with a word of hope, nothing 
but a number on a tin tablet. Nothing more 
incredibly sordid could be devised. One thought 
of the sad rite, the melancholy priest, the hand- 
ful of relatives glad at heart that the poor 
broken life was over and the wretched asso- 
ciations at an end. Yet even that sight too 
warned one not to linger, and that the end was 
not yet. Presently, in the gathering twilight, 
I was making my way through the streets of 
the city. The dusk had obliterated all that 
was mean and dreary. Nothing but the ir- 
regular housefronts stood up against the still 
sky, the lighted windows giving the sense of. 
home and ease. A quiet bell rang for vespers 



348 At Large 

in a church tower, and as I passed I heard an 
organ roll within. It all seemed a sweetly 
framed message to the soul, a symbol of joy 
and peace. 

But then I reflected that the danger was of 
selecting, out of the symbols that crowded 
around one on every side, merel}^ those that 
ministered to one's own satisfaction and con- 
tentment. The sad horror of that other 
place, the little bare place of desolate graves 
— that must be a symbol as well, that must 
stand as a witness of some part of the awful 
mind of God, of the strange flaw or rent that 
seems to run through His world. It may be 
more comfortable, more luxurious to detach 
the symbol that testifies to the satisfaction of 
our needs; but not thus do we draw near to 
truth and God. And then I thought that per- 
haps it was best, when we are secure and care- 
less and joyful, to look at times steadily into 
the dark abyss of the world, not in the spirit 
of morbidity, not with the sense of the ma- 
cahre — the skeleton behind the rich robe, death 
at the monarch's shoulder; but to remind our- 
selves, faithfully and wisely, that for us too 
the shadow waits; and then that in our mo- 



Symbols 349 

ments of dreariness and heaviness we should 
do well to seek for symbols of our peace, not 
thrusting them peevishly aside as only serving 
to remind us of what we have lost and for- 
feited, but dwelling on them patiently and 
hopefully, with a tender onlooking to the 
gracious horizon with all its golden lights and 
purple shadows. And thus not in a mercan- 
tile mood trafficking for our delight in the 
mysteries of life — for not by prudence can we 
draw near to God — but in a childlike mood, 
valuing the kindly word, the smile that lights 
up the narrow room and enriches the austere 
fare, and paying no heed at all to the jeal- 
ousies and the covetous ingathering that turns 
the temple of the Father into a house of 
merchandise. 

For here, deepest of all, lies the worth of the 
symbol: that this life of ours is not a little 
fretful space of days, rounded with a sleep, 
but an integral part of an inconceivably vast 
design, flooding through and behind the star- 
strewn heavens; that there is no sequence of 
events as we conceive, that acts are not done 
or words said, once and for all, and then laid 
away in the darkness; but that it is all an 



350 At Large 

ever-living thing, in which the things that we 
call old are as much present in the mind of 
God as the things that shall be millions of 
centuries hence. There is no uncertainty 
with Him, no doubt as to what shall be here- 
after; and if we once come near to that truth, 
we can draw from it, in our darkest hours, a 
refreshment that cannot fail; for the saddest 
thought in the mind of man is the thought 
that these things could have been, could be 
other than they are; and if we once can bring 
home to ourselves the knowledge that God is 
unchanged and unchangeable, our faithless 
doubts, our melancholy regrets melt in the 
light of truth, as the hoar-frost fades upon the 
grass in the rising sun, when every globed 
dewdrop flashes like a jewel in the radiance 
of the fiery dawn. 



XVI 
Optimism 

WE Anglo-Saxons are mostly optimists at 
heart; we love to have things comfort- 
able, and to pretend that they are comfortable 
when they obviously are not. The brisk Anglo- 
Saxon, if he cannot reach the grapes, does 
not say that the grapes are sour, but protests 
that he does not really care about grapes. A 
story is told of a great English proconsul who 
desired to get a loan from the Treasury of the 
Government over which he practically, though 
not nominally, presided. He went to the 
Financial Secretary and said : ^' Look here, 

T , you must get me a loan for a business 

I have very much at heart." The secretary 
whistled, and then said, " Well, I will try ; 
but it is not the least use." " Oh, you will 
manage it somehow," said the proconsul, " and 
I may tell you confidentially it is absolutely 
essential." The following morning the secre- 

351 



352 At Large 

tary came to report : " I told you it was no 
use, sir, and it wasn't; the Board would not 
hear of if " Damnation ! " said the procon- 
sul, and went on writing. A week after he 
met the secretary, who felt a little shy. " By 

the way, T ," said the great man, " I have 

been thinking over that matter of the loan, 
and it was a mercy you were not successful ; it 
would have been a hopeless precedent, and we 
are much better without it.'' 

That is the true Anglo-Saxon spirit of optim- 
ism. The most truly British person I know 
is a man who will move heaven and earth to 
secure a post or to compass an end; but when 
he fails, as he does not often fail, he says gen- 
ially that he is more thankful than he can say ; 
it would have been ruin to him if he had been 
successful. The same quality runs through 
our philosophy and our religion. Who but an 
Anglo-Saxon would have invented the robust 
theory, to account for the fact that prayers 
are often not granted, that prayers are always 
directly answered whether you attain your de- 
sire or not. The Greeks prayed that the gods 
would grant them what was good even if they 
did not desire it, and withhold what was evil 



Optimism 353 

if they did desire it. The shrewd Roman said, 
^' The gods will give us what is most appro- 
priate; man is dearer to them than to him- 
self." But the faithful Anglo-Saxon maintains 
that his prayer is none the less answered even 
if it be denied, and that it is made up to him 
in some roundabout way. It is inconceivable 
to the Anglo-Saxon that there may be a strain 
of sadness and melancholy in the very mind 
of God; he cannot understand that there can 
be any beauty in sorrow. To the Celt, sor- 
row itself is dear and beautiful, and the 
mournful wailing of winds, the tears of the 
lowering cloud, afford him sweet and even 
luxurious sensations. The memory of grief 
is one of the good things that remain to 
him, as life draws to its close; for love is 
to him the sister of grief rather than the 
mother of joy. But this is to the Anglo-Saxon 
mind a morbid thing. The hours in which 
sorrow has overclouded him are wasted, deso- 
lated hours, to be forgotten and obliterated as 
soon as possible. There is nothing sacred 
about them ; they are sad and stony tracts over 
which he has made haste to cross, and the only 
use of them is to heighten the sense of secu- 

33 



354 At Large 

rity and joy. And thus the sort of sayings 
that satisfy and sustain the Anglo-Saxon 
mind are such irrepressible outbursts of poets 
as ^' God 's in His heaven ; all 's right with the 
world " — the latter part of which is flagrantly 
contradicted by experience; and, as for the 
former part, if it be true, it lends no comfort 
to the man who tries to find his God in the 
iworld. Again, when Browning says that the 
,world " means intensely and means good," he 
is but pouring oil upon the darting flame of 
optimism, because there are many people to 
\vhom the world has no particular meaning, 
and few who can re-echo the statement that 
it means good. That some rich surprise, in 
spite of palpable and hourly experience to the 
contrary, may possibly await us, is the most 
that some of us dare to hope. 

My own experience, the older I grow, and 
the more I see of life, is that I feel it to be a 
much more bewildering and even terrifying 
thing than I used to think it. To use a meta- 
phor, instead of its being a patient educational 
process, which I would give all that I pos- 
sessed to be able sincerely to believe it to be, 
it seems to me arranged far more upon the 



Optimism 355 

principle of a game of cricket — which I have 
always held to be, in theory, the most unjust 
and fortuitous of games. You step to the 
wicket, you have only a single chance; the 
boldest and most patient man may make one 
mistake at the outset, and his innings is over; 
the timid tremulous player may by undeserved 
good luck contrive to keep his wicket up, till 
his heart has got into the right place, and his 
eye has wriggled straight, and he is set. 

That is the first horrible fact about life — 
that carelessness is often not penalised at all, 
whereas sometimes it is instantly and fiercely 
penalised. One boy at school may break every 
law, human and divine, and go out into the 
world unblemished. Another timid and good- 
natured child may make a false step, and 
be sent off into life with a permanent cloud 
over him. School life often emphasises the 
injustice of the world instead of trying to 
counteract it. Schoolmasters tend to hustle 
the weak rather than to curb the strong. 

And then we pass into the larger world, and 
what do we see? A sad confusion every- 
where. We see an innocent and beautiful 
girl struck down by a long and painful dis- 



35^ At Large 

ease — a punishment perhaps appropriate to 
some robust and hoary sinner, who has gath- 
ered forbidden fruit with both his hands, and 
the juices of which go down to the skirts of 
his clothing; or a brave and virtuous man, 
with a wife and children dependent on him, 
needed if ever man was, kind, beneficent, 
strong, is struck down out of life in a moment. 
On the other hand, we see a mean and cautious 
sinner, with no touch of unselfishness and af- 
fection, guarded and secured in material con- 
tentment. Let any one run over in his mind 
the memories of his own circle, fill up the 
gaps, and ask himself bravely and frankly 
whether he can trace a wise and honest and 
beneficent design all through. He may try 
to console himself by saying that the disasters 
of good people, after all, are the exceptions, 
and that, as a rule, courage and purity of 
heart are rewarded, while cowardice and filthi- 
ness are punished. But what room is there 
for exceptions in a world governed by a God 
whom we must believe to be all-powerful, all- 
just, and all-loving? It is the wilful sin of 
man, says the moralist, that has brought these 
hard things upon him. But that is no answer, 



Optimism 357 

for the dark shadow lies as sombrely over 
irresponsible nature, which groans over un- 
deserved suffering. And then, to make the 
shadow darker still, we have all the same love 
of life, the same inalienable sense of our right 
to happiness, the same inheritance of love. If 
we could but see that in the end pain and loss 
would be blest, there is nothing that we would 
not gladly bear. Yet that sight, too, is de- 
nied us. 

And jet we live, and laugh, and hope, and 
forget. We take our fill of tranquil days and 
pleasant companies, though for some of us the 
thought that it is all passing, passing, even 
while we lean towards it smiling, touches the 
very sunlight with pain. " How morbid, how 
self-tormenting ! " says the prudent friend, if 
such thoughts escape us. " Why not enjoy 
delight and bear the pain? That is life; we 
cannot alter it." But not on such terms can 
I, for one, live. To know, to have some as- 
surance — that is the one and only thing that 
matters at all. For if I once believed that 
God were careless, or indifferent, or impotent, 
I would fly from life as an accursed thing; 
whereas I would give all the peace, and joy, 



358 At Large 

and contentment, that may yet await me upon 
earth, and take up cheerfully the heaviest bur- 
den that could be devised of darkness and 
pain, if I could be sure of an after-life that 
will give us all the unclouded serenity, and 
strength, and love, for which we crave every 
moment. Sometimes, in a time of strength 
and calm weather, when the sun is bright and 
the friend I love is with me, and the scent of 
the hyacinths blows from the wood, I have no 
doubt of the love and tenderness of God; and, 
again, when I wake in the dreadful dawn to 
the sharp horror of the thought that one I 
love is suffering and crying out in pain and 
drifting on to death, the beauty of the world, 
the familiar scene, is full of a hateful and 
atrocious insolence of grace and sweetness; 
and then I feel that we are all perhaps in the 
grip of some relentless and inscrutable law 
that has no care for our happiness or peace at 
all, and works blindly and furiously in the 
darkness, bespattering some with woe and 
others with joy. Those are the blackest and 
most horrible moments of life; and yet even 
so we live on. 

As I write at my ease I see the velvety grass 



Optimism 359 

green on the rich pasture; the tall spires of 
the chestnut perch, and poise, and sway in 
the sun ; a thrush sings hidden in the orchard ; 
it is all caressingly, enchantingly beautiful, 
and I am well content to be alive. Looking 
backwards, I discern that I have had my share, 
and more than my share, of good things. But 
they are over; they are mine no longer. And 
even as I think the thought, the old church 
clock across the fields tells out another hour 
that is fallen softly into the glimmering past. 
If I could discern any strength or patience 
won from hours of pain and sorrow it would 
be easier; but the memory of pain makes me 
dread pain the more, the thought of past sor- 
row makes future sorrow still more black. I 
would rather have strength than tranquillity, 
when all is done; but life has rather taught me 
my weakness, and struck the garland out of 
my reluctant hand. 

To-day I have been riding quietly among 
fields deep with buttercups and fringed by 
clear, slow streams. The trees are in full 
spring leaf, only the oaks and walnuts a little 
belated, unfurling their rusty-red fronds. A 
waft of rich scent comes from a hawthorn- 



360 At Large 

hedge where a hidden cuckoo flutes, or just 
where the lane turns by the old water-mill, 
which throbs and grumbles with the moving 
gear, a great lilac-bush leans out of a garden 
and fills the air with perfume. Yet, as I go, 
I am filled with a heavy anxiety, which plays 
with my sick heart as a cat plays with a 
mouse, letting it run a little in the sun, and 
then pouncing upon it in terror and dismay. 
The beautiful sounds and sights round me — 
the sight of the quiet, leisurely people I meet 
— ought, one would think, to soothe and calm 
the unquiet heart. But they do not; they 
rather seem to mock and flout me with a 
savage insolence of careless welfare. My 
thoughts go back, I do not know why, to an 
old house where I spent many happy days, now 
in the hands of strangers. I remember sit- 
ting, one of a silent and happy party, on a ter- 
race in the dusk of a warm summer night, 
and how one of those present called to the 
owls that were hooting in the hanging wood 
above the house, so that they drew near in 
answer to the call, flying noiselessly and sud- 
denly uttering their plaintive notes from the 
heart of the great chestnut on the lawn. Be- 



Optimism 361 

low I can see the dewy glimmering fields, the 
lights of the little port, the pale sea-line. It 
seems now all impossibly beautiful and tran- 
quil; but I know that even then it was often 
marred by disappointments, and troubles, and 
fears. Little anxieties that have all melted 
softly into the past, that were easily enough 
borne, when it came to the point, yet, looming 
up as they did in the future, filled the days 
with the shadow of fear. That is the phantom 
that one ought to lay, if it can be laid. And 
is there hidden somewhere any well of heal- 
ing, any pure source of strength and refresh- 
ment from which we can drink and be calm 
and brave? That is a question which each 
has to answer for himself. For myself, I 
can only say that strength is sometimes 
given, sometimes denied. How foolish to be 
anxious! Yes, but how inevitable! If the 
beauty and the joy of the world gave one as- 
surance in dark hours that all was certainly 
well, the pilgrimage would be an easy one. 
But can one be optimistic by resolving to be? 
One can, of course, control oneself, one can 
let no murmur of pain escape one, one can 
even enunciate deep and courageous maxims 



362 At Large 

because one would not trouble the peace of 
others, waiting patiently till the golden mood 
returns. But what if the desolate conviction 
forces itself upon the mind that sorrow is the 
truer thing? What if one tests one's own ex- 
perience, and sees that, under the pressure 
of sorrow, one after another of the world's 
lights are extinguished, health, and peace, 
and beauty, and delight, till one asks oneself 
whether sorrow is not perhaps the truest and 
most actual thing of all? That is the ghastli- 
est of moments when everything drops from 
us but fear and horror, when we think that we 
have indeed found truth at last, and that the 
answer to Pilate's bitter question is that pain 
is the nearest thing to truth because it is the 
strongest. If I felt that, says the reluctant 
heart, I should abandon myself to despair. 
No, says sterner reason, you would bear it, 
because you cannot escape from it. Into 
whatever depths of despair you fell, you would 
still be upheld by the law that bids you be. 

Where, then, is the hope to be found? It 
is here: One is tempted to think of God 
through human analogies and symbols. We 
think of Him as of a potter moulding the clay 



Optimism 363 

to his will; as of a statesman that sways a 
state; as of an artist that traces a fair design. 
But all similitudes and comparisons break 
down, for no man can create anything; he can 
but modify matter to his ends, and when he 
fails, it is because of some natural law that 
cuts across his design and thwarts him relent- 
lessly. But the essence of God's omnipotence 
is that both law and matter are His and origi- 
nate from Him; so that, if a single fibre of 
what we know to be evil can be found in the 
world, either God is responsible for that, or 
He is dealing with something He did not origi- 
nate and cannot overcome. Nothing can ex- 
tricate us from this dilemma, except the belief 
that what we think evil is not really evil at 
all, but hidden good; and thus we have firm 
ground under our feet at last, and can begin 
to climb out of the abyss. And then we feel 
in our own hearts how indomitable is our 
sense of our right to happiness, how uncon- 
querable our hope; how swiftly we forget un- 
happiness; how firmly we remember joy; and 
then we see that the one absolutely permanent 
and vital power in the world is the power of 
love, which wins victories over every evil we 



364 At Large 

can name; and if it is so plain that love is the 
one essential and triumphant force in the 
world, it must be the very heart-beat of God: 
till we feel that when soon or late the day 
comes for us, when our swimming eyes discern 
ever more faintly the awe-struck pitying faces 
round us, and the senses give up their powers 
one by one, and the tides of death creep on us, 
and the daylight dies — that even so we shall 
find that love awaiting us in the region to 
which the noblest and bravest and purest, as 
well as the vilest and most timid and most 
soiled, have gone. 

This, then, is the only optimism that is 
worth the name; not the feeble optimism that 
brushes away the darker side of life impa- 
tiently and fretfully, but the optimism that 
dares to look boldly into the fiercest miseries 
of the human spirit, and to come back, as 
Perseus came, pale and smoke-stained, from 
the dim underworld, and say that there is yet 
hope brightening on the verge of the gloom. 

What one desires, then, is an optimism which 
arises from taking a wide view of things as 
they are, and taking the worst side into ac- 
count, not an optimism which is only made 



Optimism 365 

possible by wearing blinkers. I was reading 
a day or two ago a suggestive and brilliant 
book by one of our most prolific critics, Mr. 
Chesterton, on the subject of Dickens. Mr. 
Chesterton is of opinion that our modern ten- 
dency to pessimism results from our inveter- 
ate realism. Contrasting modern fictions with 
the old heroic stories, he says that we take 
some indecisive clerk for the subject of a story, 
and call the weak-kneed cad " the hero." He 
seems to think that we ought to take a larger 
and more robust view of human possibilities 
and keep our eyes more steadily fixed upon 
more vigorous and generous characters. But 
the result of this is the ugly and unphilosophi- 
cal kind of optimsm after all, that calls upon 
God to despise the work of His own hands, 
that turns upon all that is feeble and unsightly 
and vulgar with anger and disdain, like the 
man in the parable who took advantage of his 
being forgiven a great debt to exact a tiny 
one. The tragedy is that the knock-kneed 
clerk is all in all to himself. In clear-sighted 
and imaginative moments, he may realise in a 
sudden flash of horrible insight that he is so 
far from being what he would desire to be — 



366 At Large 

so unheroic, so loosely strung, so deplorable 
— and yet that he can do so little to bridge the 
gap. The only method of manufacturing 
heroes is to encourage people to believe in 
themselves and their possibilities, to assure 
them that they are indeed dear to God; not 
to reveal relentlessly to them their essential 
lowness and shabbiness. It is not the clerk's 
fault that his mind is sordid and weak, and 
that his knees knock together; and no optim- 
ism is worth the name that has not a glorious 
message for the vilest. Or, again, it is pos- 
sible to arrive at a working optimism by tak- 
ing a very dismal view of everything. There 
is a story of an old Calvinist minister whose 
daughter lay dying, far away, of a painful 
disease, who wrote her a letter of consolation, 
closing with the words " Remember, dear 
daughter, that all short of Hell is mercy." Of 
course if one can take so richly decisive a view 
of the Creator's purpose for his creatures, 
and look upon Hell as the normal destination 
from which a few, by the overpowering con- 
descension of God, are saved and separated, 
one might find matter of joy in discovering 
one soul in a thousand who was judged worthy 



Optimism 367 

of salvation. But this again is a clouded 
view, because it takes no account of the pro- 
found and universal preference for happiness 
in the human heart, and erects the horrible 
ideal of a Creator who deliberately condemns 
the vast mass of His creatures to a fate which 
He has no less deliberately created them to 
abhor and dread. 

Our main temptation after all lies in the 
fact that we are so impatient of any delay or 
any uneasiness. We are like the child who, 
when first confronted with suffering, cannot 
bear to believe in its existence, and who, if it 
is prolonged, cannot believe in the existence 
of anything else. What we have rather to do 
is to face the problem strongly and coura- 
geously, to take into account the worst and 
feeblest possibilities of our nature, and yet 
not to overlook the fact that the worst and 
lowest specimen of humanity has a dim ink- 
ling of something higher and happier, to 
which he would attain if he knew how. 

I had a little object-lesson a few days ago 
in the subject. It was a Bank Holiday, and 
I walked pensively about the outskirts of a 
big town. The streets were crowded with 



368 At Large 

people of all sorts and sizes. I confess that 
a profound melancholy was induced in me by 
the spectacle of the young of both sexes. They 
were enjoying themselves, it is true, with all 
their might; and I could not help wondering 
why, as a rule, they should enjoy themselves 
so offensively. The girls walked about titter- 
ing and ogling; the young men were noisy, 
selfish, ill-mannered, enjoying nothing so much 
as the discomfiture of any passer-by. They 
pushed each other into ditches, they tripped 
up a friend who passed on a bicycle, and all 
roared in concert at the rueful way in which 
he surveyed a muddy coat and torn trousers. 
There seemed to be not the slightest idea 
among them of contributing to each other's 
pleasure. The point was to be amused at the 
expense of another, and to be securely 
obstreperous. 

But among these there were lovers walking, 
faint and pale with mutual admiration; a 
young couple led along a hideous over-dressed 
child, and had no eyes for anything except 
its clumsy movements and fatuous questions. 
Or an elderly couple strolled along, pleased 
and contented, with a married son and daugh- 



Optimism 369 

ter. The cure of the vile mirth of youth 
seemed after all to be love and the anxious 
care of other lives. 

And thus indeed a gentle optimism did 
emerge, after all, from the tangle. I felt that 
it was strange that there should be so much 
to breed dissatisfaction. I struck out of the 
town, and soon was passing a mill in broad 
water-meadows, overhung by great elms; the 
grass was golden with buttercups, the foliage 
was rich upon the trees. The water bubbled 
pleasantly in the great pool, and an old house 
thrust a pretty gable out over lilacs clubbed 
with purple bloom. The beauty of the place 
was put to my lips, like a cup of the waters 
of comfort. The sadness was the drift of hu- 
man life out of sweet places such as this, into 
the town that overflowed the meadows with 
its avenues of mean houses, where the railway 
station, with its rows of stained trucks, its 
cindery floor, its smoking engines, buzzed and 
roared with life. 

But the pessimism of one who sees the sim- 
ple life fading out, the ancient quietude in- 
vaded, the country caught in the feelers of the 
town, is not a real pessimism at all, or rather 



370 At Large 

it is a pessimism which results from a de- 
ficiency of imagination, and is only a matter 
of personal taste, perhaps of personal belated- 
ness. Twelve generations of my own family 
lived and died as Yorkshire yeomen-farmers, 
and my own preference is probably a matter 
of instinctive inheritance. The point is not 
what a few philosophers happen to like, but 
what humanity likes, and what it is happiest 
in liking. I should have but small confidence 
in the Power that rules the world, if I did not 
believe that the vast social development of 
Europe, its civilisation, its net-work of com- 
munications, its bustle, its tenser living, its 
love of social excitement was not all part of a 
great design. I do not believe that humanity 
is perversely astray, hurrying to destruction. 
I believe rather that it is working out the pos- 
sibilities that lie within it; and if human be- 
ings had been framed to live quiet pastoral 
lives, they would be living them still. The 
one question for the would-be optimist is 
whether humanity is growing nobler, wiser, 
more unselfish, and of that I have no doubt 
whatever. The sense of equality, of the rights 
of the weak, compassion, brotherliness, bene- 



Optimism 37i 

volence are living ideas, throbbing with life; 
the growth of the power of democracy, much 
as it may tend to inconvenience one person- 
ally, is an entirely hopeful and desirable thing ; 
and if a man is disposed to pessimism, he ought 
to ask himself seriously to what extent his 
pessimism is conditioned by his own individ- 
ual prospect of happiness. It is quite pos- 
sible to conceive of a man without any hope of 
personal immortality, or the continuance of 
individual identity, whose future might be 
clouded, say, by his being the victim of a pain- 
ful and incurable disease, and who yet might 
be a thorough-going optimist with regard to 
the future of humanity. Nothing in the world 
could be so indicative of the rise in the moral 
and emotional temperature of the world as 
the fact that men are increasingly disposed to 
sacrifice their own ambitions and their own 
comfort for the sake of others, and are will- 
ing to suffer, if the happiness of the race may 
be increased; and much of the pessimism that 
prevails is the pessimism of egotists and in- 
dividualists, who feel no interest in the rising 
tide, because it does not promise to themselves 
any increase in personal satisfaction. No 



372 At Large 

man can possibly hold the continuance of per 
sonal identity to be an indisputable fact, 
because there is no sort of direct evidence on 
the subject; and indeed all the evidence that 
exists is rather against the belief than for 
it. The belief is in reality based upon no- 
thing but instinct and desire, and the impos- 
sibility of conceiving of life as existing apart 
from one's own perception. But even if a 
man cannot hold that it is in any sense a 
certainty, he may cherish a hope that it is 
true, and he may be generously and sincerely 
grateful for having been allowed to taste, 
through the medium of personal conscious- 
ness, the marvellous experience of the beauty 
and interest of life, its emotions, its relation- 
ships, its infinite yearnings, even though the 
curtain may descend upon his own conscious- 
ness of it, and he himself may become as 
though he had never been, his vitality blended 
afresh in the vitality of the world, just as the 
body of his life, so near to him, so seemingly 
his own, will undoubtedly be fused and blent 
afresh in the sum of matter. A man, even 
though racked with pain and tortured with 
anxiety, may deliberately and resolutely 



Optimism 373 

throw himself into sympathy with the mighty 
will of God, and cherish this noble and awe- 
inspiring thought — the thought of the onward 
march of humanity; righting wrongs, amend- 
ing errors, fighting patiently against pain and 
evil, until, perhaps far-off and incredibly re- 
mote, our successors and descendants, linked 
indeed with us in body and soul alike, may 
enjoy that peace and tranquillity, that harmony 
of soul, which we ourselves can only momen- 
tarily and transitorily obtain. 



XVII 

Joy 

DR. ARNOLD somewhere says that the 
schoolmaster's experience of being con- 
tinually in the presence of the hard mechani- 
cal high spirits of boyhood is an essentially 
depressing thing. It seemed to him depress- 
ing just because that happiness was so purely 
incidental to youth and health, and did not 
proceed from any sense of jirinciple, any re- 
serve of emotion, any self-restraint, any activ- 
ity of sympathy. I confess that in my own 
experience as a schoolmaster the particular 
phenomenon was sometimes a depressing thing 
and sometimes a relief. It was depressing 
when one was overshadowed by a fretful 
anxiety or a real sorrow, because no appeal 
to it seemed possible: it had a heartless quality. 
But again it was a relief when it distracted 
one from the pressure of a troubled thought, 
as when, in the Idylls of the King, the sorrow- 

374 



Joy 375 



ful queen was comforted by the little maiden 
^^ who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness, 
which often lured her from herself." 

One felt that one had no right to let the 
sense of anxiety overshadow the natural 
cheerfulness of boyhood, and then one made 
the effort to detach oneself from one's pre- 
occupations, with the result that they pres- 
ently weighed less heavily upon the heart. 

The blessing would be if one could find in 
experience a quality of joy which should be 
independent of natural high spirits altogetherj 
a cheerful tranquillity of outlook, which should 
become almost instinctive through practice, a 
mood which one could at all events evoke in 
such a way as to serve as a shield and screen 
to one's own private troubles, or which at least 
would prevent one from allowing the shadow 
of one's discontent to fall over others. 
But it must be to a certain extent tempera- 
mental. Just as high animal spirits in some 
people are irrepressible, and bubble up even 
under the menace of irreparable calamity, so 
gloom of spirit is a very contagious thing, very 
difficult to dissimulate. Perhaps the best 
practical thing for a naturally melancholy 



376 At Large 

person to try and do, is to treat his own low 
spirits, as Charles Lamb did, ironically and 
humorously; and if he must spin conversation 
incessantly, as Dr. Johnson said, out of his 
own bowels, to make sure that it is the best 
thread possible, and of a gossamer quality. 

The temperamental fact upon which tbe pos- 
sibility of such a philosophical cheerfulness 
is based is after all an ultimate hopeful- 
ness. Some people have a remarkable staying 
power, a power of looking through and over 
present troubles, and consoling themselves 
with pleasant visions of futurity. This is 
commoner with women than with men, because 
women derive a greater happiness from the 
happiness of those about them than men do. 
A woman as a rule would prefer that the peo- 
ple who surround her should be cheerful, even 
if she were not cheerful herself; whereas a 
man is often not ill-pleased that his moods 
should be felt by his circle, and regards it as 
rather an insult that other people should be 
joyful when he is ill-at-ease. Some people, 
too, have a stronger dramatic sense than 
others, and take an artistic pleasure in play- 
ing a part. I knew a man who was a great 



Joy 377 

invalid and a frequent sufferer, who took a 
great pleasure in appearing in public func- 
tions. He would drag himself from his bed to 
make a public appearance of any kind. I 
think that he consoled himself by believing 
that he did so from a strong and sustaining 
sense of duty; but I believe that the pleasure 
of the thing was really at the root of his effort, 
as it is at the root of most of the duties we 
faithfully perform. I do not mean that he had 
a strong natural vanity, though his enemies 
accused him of it. But publicity was natu- 
rally congenial to him, and the only sign, as a 
rule, that he was suffering, when he made such 
an appearance, was a greater deliberation of 
movement, and a ghastly fixity of smile. As 
to the latter phenomenon, a man with the 
dramatic sense strongly developed will no 
doubt take a positive pleasure in trying to 
obliterate from his face and manner all traces 
of his private discomfort. Such stoicism is a 
fine quality in its way, but the quality that I 
am in search of is an even finer one than that. 
My friend's efforts were ultimately based on 
a sort of egotism, a profound conviction that 
a public part suited him, and that he per- 



37^ At Large 

formed it well. What one rather desires to 
attain is a more sympathetic quality, an in- 
terest in other people so vital and inspiring 
that one's own personal sufferings are light in 
the scale when weighed against the enjoyment 
of others. It is not impossible to develop this 
in the face of considerable bodily suffering. 
One of the most inveterately cheerful people 
I have ever known was a man who suffered 
from a painful and irritating complaint, but 
whose geniality and good-will were so strong 
that they not only overpowered his malaise, 
but actually afforded him considerable relief. 
Some people who suffer can only suffer in 
solitude. They have to devote the whole of 
their nervous energies to the task of endur- 
ance; but others find society an agreeable 
distraction, and fly to it as an escape from 
discomfort. I suppose that every one has 
experienced at times that extraordinary 
rebellion, so to speak, of cheerfulness against 
an attack of physical pain. There have been 
days when I have suffered from some small 
but acutely disagreeable ailment, and yet 
found my cheerfulness not only not dimmed 
but apparently enhanced by the physical suf- 



Joy 379 

fering. Of course there are maladies even of 
a serious kind of whicli one of the symptoms 
is a great mental depression, but there are 
other maladies which seem actually to pro- 
duce an instinctive hopefulness. 

But the question is whether it is possible, by 
sustained effort, to behave independently of 
one's mood, and what motive is strong enough 
to make one detach oneself resolutely from 
discomforts and woes. Good manners provide 
perhaps the most practical assistance. The 
people who are brought up with a tradition of 
highbred courtesy, and who learn almost in- 
stinctively to repress their own individuality, 
can generally triumph over their moods. Per- 
haps in their expansive moments they lose a 
little spontaneity in the process; they are 
cheerful rather than buoyant, gentle rather 
than pungent. But the result is that when 
the mood shifts into depression, they are still 
imperturbably courteous and considerate. A 
near relation of a great public man, who suf- 
fered greatly from mental depression, has told 
me that some of the most painful minutes he 
has ever been witness of were, when the great 
man, after behaving on some occasion of social 



380 At Large 

festivity with an admirable and sustained 
gaiety, fell for a moment into irreclaimable 
and hopeless gloom and fatigue, and then 
again, by a resolute effort, became strenuously 
considerate and patient in the privacy of the 
family circle. 

Some people achieve the same mastery over 
mood by an intensity of religious conviction. 
But the worst of that particular triumph is 
that an attitude of chastened religious pa- 
tience is, not unusually, a rather depressing 
thing. It is so restrained, so pious, that it 
tends to deprive life of natural and unaffected 
joy. If it is patient and submissive in afflic- 
tion, it is also tame and mild in cheerful sur- 
roundings. It issues too frequently in a kind 
of holy tolerance of youthful ebullience and 
vivid emotions. It results in the kind of char- 
acter that is known as saintly, and is gener- 
ally accompanied by a strong deficiency in the 
matter of humour. Life is regarded as too 
serious a business to be played with, and the 
delight in trifles, which is one of the surest 
signs of healthy energy, becomes ashamed and 
abashed in its presence. The atmosphere that 
it creates is oppressive, remote, ungenial. " I 



Joy 381 

declare that Uncle John is intolerable, except 
when there is a death in the family — and then 
he is insupportable," said a youthful nephew 
of a virtuous clergyman of this type in my 
presence the other day, adding, after reflec- 
tion, " He seems to think that to die is the 
only really satisfactory thing that any one 
ever does." That is the worst of carrying out 
the precept, " Set your affections on things 
above, not on things of the earth," too liter- 
ally. It is not so good a precept, after all, as 
" If a man love not his brother, whom he hath 
seen, how shall he love God, whom he hath 
not seen?" It is somehow an incomplete 
philosophy to despise the only definite exist- 
ence we are certain of possessing. One de- 
sires a richer thing than that, a philosophy 
that ends in temperance, rather than in a 
harsh asceticism. 

The handling of life that seems the most de- 
sirable is the method which the Platonic So- 
crates employed. Perhaps he was an ideal 
figure; but yet there are few figures more real. 
There we have an elderly man of incomparable 
ugliness, who is yet delightfully and per- 
ennially youthful, bubbling over with inter- 



3^2 At Large 

est, affection, courtesy, humour, admiration. 
With what a delicious mixture of irony and 
tenderness he treats the young men who sur- 
round him! When some lively sparks made 
up their minds to do what we now call " rag " 
him, dressed themselves up as Furies, and 
ran out upon him as he turned a dark corner 
on his way home, Socrates was not in the 
least degree disturbed, but discoursed with 
them readily on many matters and particu- 
larly on temperance; when at the banquet the 
topers disappear, one by one, under the table, 
Socrates, who, besides taking his due share of 
the wine, had filled and drunk the contents of 
the wine-cooler, is found cheerfully sitting, 
crowned with roses, among the expiring 
lamps, in the grey of the morning, discussing 
the higher mathematics. He is never sick or 
sorry; he is poor and has a scolding wife; he 
fasts or eats as circumstances dictate; he 
never does anything in particular, but he has 
always infinite leisure to have his talk out. 
Is he drawn for military service? he goes off, 
with an entire indifference to the hardships of 
the campaign. When the force is routed, he 
stalks deliberately off the field, looking round 



Joy 383 

him like a great bird, with the kind of air that 
makes pursuers let people alone, as Alcibiades 
said. And when the final catastrophe draws 
near, he defends himself under a capital 
charge with infinite good-humour ; he has cared 
nothing for slander and misrepresentation all 
his life, and why should he begin now? In 
the last inspired scene, he is the only man of 
the group who keeps his courteous tranquillity 
to the end; he had been sent into the world, he 
had lived his life, why should he fear to be 
dismissed? It matters little, in the presence 
of this august imagination, if the real Socrates 
was a rude and prosy person, who came by 
his death simply because the lively Athenians 
could tolerate anything but a bore! 

The Socratic attitude is better than the 
highbred attitude; it is better than the stoical 
attitude, it is even better than the pioun 
attitude; because it depends upon living life 
to the uttermost, rather than upon detaching 
oneself from what one considers rather a poor 
business. The attitude of Socrates is based 
upon courage, generosity, simplicity. He 
knows that it is with fear that we weight our 
melancholy sensibilities; that it is with mean- 



3^4 At Large 

ness and coldness that we poison life, that it 
is with complicated conventional duties that 
we fetter our weakness. Socrates has no per- 
sonal ambitions, and thus he is rid of all envy 
and uncharitableness ; he sees the world as it 
is, a very bright and brave place, teeming with 
interesting ideas and undetermined problems. 
Where Christianity has advanced upon this — 
for it has advanced splendidly and securely — 
is in interpreting life less intellectually. The 
intellectual side of life is what Socrates 
adores; the Christian faith is applicable to 
a far wider circle of homely lives. Yet 
Christianity too, in spite of ecclesiasticism, 
teems with ideas. Its essence is an unpre- 
judiced freedom of soul. Its problems are 
problems of character which the simplest child 
can appreciate. But Christianity, too, is 
built upon a basis of joy. " Freely ye have re- 
ceived, freely give," is its essential maxim. 

The secret then is to enjoy; but the enjoy- 
ment must not be that of the spoiler who car- 
ries away all that he can, and buries it in his 
tent; but the joy of relationship, the joy of 
conspiring together to be happy, the joy of 
consoling and sympathising and sharing, be- 



Joy 385 

cause we have received so much. Of course 
there remain the limitations of temperament, 
the difficulty of preventing our own acrid 
humours from overflowing into other lives ; but 
this cannot be overcome by repression; it can 
only be overcome by tenderness. There are 
very few people who have not the elements of 
this in their character. I can count upon my 
fingers the malevolent men I know, who prefer 
making others uncomfortable to trying to 
make them glad; and all these men have been 
bullied in their youth, and are unconsciously 
protecting themselves against bullying still. 
We grow selfish, no doubt, for want of prac- 
tice; ill-health makes villains of some of us. 
But we can learn, if we desire it, to keep our 
gruffness for our own consumption, and a very 
few experiments will soon convince us that 
there are few pleasures in the world so reason- 
able and so cheap, as the pleasure of giving 
pleasure. 

But, after all, the resolute cheerfulness that 
can be to a certain extent captured and secured 
by an effort of the will, though it is perhaps 
a more useful quality than natural joy, and 
no doubt ranks together in the moral scale, is 

25 



386 At Large 

not to be compared with a certain unreason- 
ing, incommunicable rapture which sometimes, 
without conscious efforts or desire, descends 
upon the spirit, like sunshine after rain. Let 
me quote a recent experience of my own which 
may illustrate it. 

A few days ago, I had a busy tiresome 
morning hammering into shape a stupid pro- 
saic passage, of no suggestiveness ; a mere 
statement, the only beauty of which could be 
that it should be absolutely lucid; and this 
beauty it resolutely refused to assume. Then 
the agent called to see me, and we talked busi- 
ness of a dull kind. Then I walked a little 
way among fields; and when I was in a pleas- 
ant flat piece of ground, full of thickets, 
where the stream makes a bold loop among 
willows and alders, the sun set behind a great 
bastion of clouds that looked like a huge forti- 
fication. It had been one of those days of 
cloudless skies, all flooded with the pale cold 
honey-coloured light of the winter sun, until a 
sense almost of spring came into the air; and 
in a sheltered place I found a little golden 
hawk-weed in full flower. 

It had not been a satisfactory day at all to 



Joy 387 



me. The statement that I had toiled so hard 
all the morning to make clear was not par- 
ticularly worth making; it could effect but 
little at best, and I had only worked at it in 
a British doggedness of spirit, regardless of 
its value and only because I was determined 
not to be beaten by it. 

But for all that I came home in a rare and 
delightful frame of mind, as if I had heard a 
brief and delicate passage of music, a con- 
spiracy of sweet sounds and rich tones; or 
as if I had passed through a sweet scent, such 
as blows from a cloverlield in summer. There 
was no definite thought to disentangle; it was 
rather as if I had had a glimpse of the land 
which lies east of the sun and west of the 
moon, had seen the towers of a castle rise over 
a wood of oaks; met a company of serious 
people in comely apparel riding blithely on 
the turf of a forest road, who had waved me a 
greeting, and left me wondering out of what 
rich kind of scene they had stepped to bless 
me. It left me feeling as though there were 
some beautiful life, very near me, all around 
me, behind the mirror, outside of the door, 
beyond the garden-hedges, if I could but learn 



388 At Large 

the spell which would open it to me; left me 
pleasantly and happily athirst for a life of 
gracious influences and of an unknown and 
perfect peace; such as creeps over the mind 
for the moment at the sight of a deep wood- 
land at sunset, when the forest is veiled in the 
softest of blue mist; or at the sound of some 
creeping sea, beating softly all night on a level 
sand; or at the prospect of a winter sun going 
down into smoky orange vapours over a wide 
expanse of pastoral country; or at the soft 
close of some solemn music — when peace seems 
not only desirable beyond all things but at- 
tainable too. 

How can one account for this sudden and 
joyful visitation? I am going to try and set 
down what I believe to be the explanation, if 
I can reduce to words a thought which is per- 
fectly clear to me, however transcendental it 
may seem. 

Well, at such a moment as this, one feels 
just as one may feel when from the streets of a 
dark and crowded city, with the cold shadow 
of a cloud passing over it, one sees the green 
head of a mountain over the housetops, all 
alone with the wind and the sun, with its crag- 



Joy 389 

bastions, its terraces and winding turf ways. 

The peace that thus blesses one is not, I 
think, a merely subjective mood, an imagined 
thing. It is, I believe, a real and actual thing 
which is there. One's consciousness does not 
create its impressions, one does not make for 
oneself the moral and artistic ideas that visit 
one; one perceives them. Education is not a 
process of invention — it is a process of discov- 
ery; a process of learning the names given to 
things that are all present in one's own mind. 
One knows things long before one knows the 
names for them, by instinct and by intuition; 
and one's own mind is simply a part of a large 
and immortal life, which for a time is fenced 
by a little barrier of identity, just as a tiny 
pool of sea-water on a sea-beach is for a few 
hours separated from the great tide to which 
it belongs. All our regrets, remorses, anxie- 
ties, troubles arise from our not realising that 
we are but a part of this greater and wider 
life, from our delusion that we are alone and 
apart instead of, as is the case, one with the 
great ocean of life and joy. 

Sometimes, I know not why and how, we 
are for a moment or two in touch with the 



390 At Large 

larger life — to some it comes in religion, to 
some in love, to some in art. Perhaps a wave 
of the onward sweeping tide beats for an in- 
stant into the little pool we call our own, stir- 
ring the fringing weed, bubbling sharply and 
freshly upon the sleeping sand. 

The sad mistake we make is, when such a 
moment comes, to feel as though it were only 
the stirring of our own feeble imagination. 
What we ought rather to do is by every effort 
we can make to welcome and comprehend this 
dawning of the larger life upon us; not to 
sink back peevishly into our own limits and 
timidly to deplore them, but resolutely to open 
the door again and again — for the door can be 
opened — to the light of the great sun that 
lies so broadly about us. Every now and then 
we have some startling experience which re- 
veals to us our essential union with other 
individuals. We have many of us had experi- 
ences which seem to indicate that there is at 
times a direct communication with other 
minds, independent of speech or writing; and 
even if we have not had such experiences, it 
has been scientifically demonstrated that such 
things can occur. Telepathy, as it is clumsily 



Joy 391 

called, which is nothing more than this direct 
communication of mind, is a thing which has 
been demonstrated in a way which no reason- 
able person can reject. We may call it ab- 
normal if we like, and it is true that we do 
not as yet know under what conditions it 
exists; but it is as much there as electrical 
communication, and just as the electrician 
does not create the viewless ripples which his 
delicate instruments can catch and record, but 
merely makes it a matter of mechanics to de- 
tect them, so the ripple of human intercom- 
munication is undoubtedly there; and when 
we have discovered what its laws are, we shall 
probably find that it underlies many things, 
such as enthusiasms, movements, the spirit 
of a community, patriotism, martial ardour, 
which now appear to us to be isolated and mys- 
terious phenomena. 

But there is a larger thing than even that 
behind. In humanity we have merely a cer- 
tain portion of this large life, which may 
spread for all we know beyond the visible uni- 
verse, globed and bounded, like the spray of a 
fountain, into little separate individualities. 
Some of the urgent inexplicable emotions 



392 At Large 

which visit us from time to time, immense, 
far-reaching, mysterious, are, I believe with 
all my heart, the pulsations of this vast life 
outside us, stirring for an instant the silence 
of our sleeping spirit. It is possible, I cannot 
help feeling, that those people live the best of 
all possible lives who devote themselves to re- 
ceiving these pulsations. It may well be that 
in following anxiously the movement of the 
world, in giving ourselves to politics or busi- 
ness, or technical religion, or material cares, 
we are but delaying the day of our freedom by 
throwing ourselves intently into our limita- 
tions, and forgetting the wider life. It may 
be that the life which Christ seems to have 
suggested as the type of Christian life — tbe 
life of constant prayer, simple and kindly re- 
lations, indifference to worldly conditions, 
absence of ambitions, fearlessness, sincerity — 
may be the life in which we can best draw near 
to the larger spirit, for Christ spoke as one 
who knew some prodigious secret, as one in 
whose soul the larger life leapt and plunged 
like fresh sea-billows; who was incapable of 
sin and even of temptation, because his soul 
had free and open contact with the all-pervad- 



Joy 393 

ing spirit, and to whom the human limitations 
were no barrier at all. 

We do not know as yet the mechanical 
means, so to speak, by which the connection 
can be established, the door set wide. But we 
can at least open our soul to every breathing 
of divine influences; and when the great wind 
rises and thunders in our spirits, we can see 
that no claim of business, or weakness, or 
comfort, or convention shall hinder us from 
admitting it. 

And thus when one of these sweet, high, up- 
lifting thoughts draws near and visits us, we 
can but say, as the child Samuel said in the 
dim-lit temple, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant 
heareth." The music comes upon the air, in 
faint and tremulous gusts; it dies away across 
the garden, over the far hill-side, into the 
cloudless sky; but we have heard; we are not 
the same; we are transfigured. 

Why then, lastly, it may be asked, do these 
experiences befall us so faintly, so secretly, so 
seldom; if it is the true life that beats so 
urgently into our souls, why are we often 
so careful and disquieted, why do we fare such 
long spaces without the heavenly vision, why 



394 At Large 

do we see, op seem to see, so many of our fel- 
lows to whom such things come rarely or not 
at all? I cannot answer that; yet I feel that 
the life is there; and I can but fall back upon 
the gentle woHds of the old saint, who wrote: 
*' I know not how it is, but the more the re- 
alities of heaven are clothed with obscurity, 
the more they delight and attract; and nothing 
so much heightens longing as such tender 
refusal." 



XVIII 
The Love of God 

HOW strange it is that what is often the 
latest reward of the toiler after holi- 
ness, the extreme solace of the outwearied 
saint, should be too often made the first irk- 
some article of a childish creed! To tell a 
child that it is a duty to love God better than 
father or mother, sisters and brothers, better 
than play, or stories, or food, or toys, what 
a monstrous thing is that! It is one of the 
things that make religion into a dreary and 
darkling shadow, that haunt the path of the 
innocent. The child's love is all for tangible, 
audible, and visible things. Love for him 
means kind words and smiling looks, ready 
comfort and lavished kisses; the child does 
not even love things for being beautiful, but 
for being what they are — curious, characteris- 
tic, interesting. He loves the odd frowsy 
smell of the shut-up attic, the bright ugly 

395 



39^ At Large 

ornaments of the chimney-piece, the dirt of 
the street. He has no sense of critical taste. 
Besides, words mean so little to him, or even 
bear quaint, fantastic associations, which no 
one can divine, and which he himself is unable 
to express; he has no notion of an abstract, 
essential, spiritual thing, apart from what is 
actual to his senses. And then into this little 
concrete mind, so full of small definite images, 
so faltering and frail, is thrust this vast, re- 
mote notion — that he is bound to love some- 
thing hidden and terrible, something that looks 
at him from the blank sky when he is alone 
among the garden-beds, something which 
haunts empty rooms and the dark brake of the 
woodland. Moreover, a child, with its pre- 
ternatural sensitiveness to pain, its bewil- 
dered terror of punishment, learns, side by 
side with this, that the God whom he is to 
love thus tenderly is the God who lays about 
Him so fiercely in the 'Old Testament, slaying 
the innocent with the guilty, merciless, harsh, 
inflicting the irreparable stroke of death, 
where a man would be concerned with desir- 
ing amendment more than vengeance. The 
simple questions with which the man Friday 



The Love of God 397 

poses Robinson Crusoe, and to which he re- 
ceives so ponderous an answer, are the ques- 
tions which naturally arise in the mind of 
any thoughtful child. Why, if God be so kind 
and loving, does He not make an end of evil 
at once? Yet, because such questions are un- 
answerable by the wisest, the child is, for the 
convenience of his education, made to feel 
that he is wicked if he questions what he is 
taught. How many children will persevere 
in the innocent scepticism which is so natural 
and so desirable, under a sense of disapproval ? 
One of my own earliest experiences in the ugly 
path of religious gloom was that I recognised 
quite clearly to myself that I did not love God 
at all. I did not know Him, I had no reason 
to think Him kind; He was angry with me, I 
gathered, if I was ill-tempered or untruth- 
ful. I was well enough aware by childish in- 
stinct that my mother did not cease to love 
me when I was naughty, but I could not tell 
about God. And yet I knew that, with His 
terrible power of knowing everything, He was 
well aware that I did not love Him. It was 
best to forget about Him as much as possible, 
for it spoiled one^s pleasure to think about it. 



39^ At Large 

All the little amusements and idle businesses 
that were so dear to me, He probably disap- 
proved of them all, and was only satisfied when 
I was safe at my lessons or immured in church. 
Sunday was the sort of day He liked, and 
how I detested it! — the toys put away, little 
ugly books about the Holy Land to read, an 
air of deep dreariness about it all. Thus does 
religion become a weariness from the outset. 
How slowly, and after what strange experi- 
ence, by what infinite delay of deduction, does 
the love of God dawn upon the soul! Even 
then how faint and subtle an essence it is! 
In deep anxiety, under unbearable strain, in 
the grip of a dilemma of which either issue 
seems intolerable, in weariness of life, in hours 
of flagging vitality, the mighty tide begins to 
flow strongly and tranquilly into the soul. 
One did not make oneself; one did not make 
one's sorrows, even when they arose from one's 
own weakness and perversity. There was 
a meaning, a significance about it all; one 
was indeed on pilgrimage; and then comes 
the running to the Father's knee, and the cast- 
ing oneself in utter broken weakness upon 
the one Heart that understands perfectly and 



The Love of God 399 

utterly, and which does, which must, desire the 
best and truest. " Give me courage, hope, con- 
fidence," says the desolate soul. 

" I can endure Thy bitterest decrees, 
If certain of Thy Love." 

How would one amend all this if one had 
the power? Alas! it could only be by silenc- 
ing all stupid and clumsy people, all rigid 
parents, all diplomatic priests, all the horrible 
natures who lick their lips with a fierce zest 
over the pains that befall the men with whom 
they do not agree. I would teach a child, in 
defiance even of reason, that God is the one 
Power that loves and understands him through 
thick and thin; that He punishes with an- 
guish and sorrow; that He exults in forgive- 
ness and mercy; that He rejoices in innocent 
happiness; that He loves courage, and bright- 
ness, and kindness, and cheerful self-sacrifice; 
that things mean, and vile, and impure, and 
cruel, are things that He does not love to 
punish, but sad and soiling stains that He 
beholds with shame and tears. This, it seems 
to me, is the Gospel teaching about God, im- 
possible only because of the hardness of our 



400 At Large 

hearts. But if it were possible, a child might 
grow to feel about sin, not that it was a hor- 
rible and unpardonable failure, a thing to 
afflict oneself drearily about, but that it was 
rather a thing which, when once spurned, 
however humiliating, could minister to pro- 
gress, in a way in which untroubled happiness 
could not operate — to be forgotten, perhaps, 
but certainly to be forgiven; a privilege rather 
than a hindrance, a gate rather than a bar- 
rier; a shadow upon the path, out of which 
one would pass, with such speed as one might, 
into the blitheness of the free air and the warm 
sun. I remember a terrible lecture which I 
heard as a little bewildered boy at school, 
anxious to do right, terrified of oppression, 
and coldness, and evil alike ; given by a worthy 
Evangelical clergyman, with large spectacles, 
and a hollow voice, and a great relish for 
spiritual terrors. The subject was " the ex- 
ceeding sinfulness of sin," a proposition 
which I now see to be as true as if one lectured 
on the exceeding carnality of flesh. But the 
lecture spoke of the horrible and filthy cor- 
ruption of the human heart, its determined 
delight in wallowing in evil, its desperate 



The Love of God 401 

wickedness. I believed it, dully and hope- 
lesslyj as a boy believes what is told him by 
a voluble elderly person of obvious respecta- 
bility. But what a detestable theory of life, 
what an ugly picture of Divine incompetence! 

Of course there are abundance of facts in 
the world which look like anything but 
love; — the ruthless and merciless punishment 
of carelessness and ignorance, the dark laws of 
heredity, the wastefulness and cruelty of 
disease, the dismal acquiescence of stupid, 
healthy, virtuous persons, without sympathy 
or imagination, in the hardships which they 
were strong enough to bear unscathed. One 
of the prime terrors of religion is the thought 
of the heavy-handed, unintelligent, tiresome 
men who would make it a monopoly if they 
could, and bear it triumphantly away from 
the hands of modest, humble, quiet, and ten- 
der-hearted people, chiding them as nebulous 
optimists. 

Who are the people in this short life of ours 
whom one remembers with deep and abiding 
gratitude? Not those who have rebuked, and 
punished, and satirised, and humiliated us, 
striking down the stricken, and flattening the 



\ 



402 At Large 

prostrate — but the people who have been pa- 
tient with us, and kind, who have believed in 
us, and comforted us, and welcomed us, and 
forgiven us everything; who have given us 
largely of their love, who have lent without 
requiring payment, who have given us emo- 
tional rather than prudential reasons; who 
have cared for us, not as a duty but by some 
divine instinct ; who have made endless excuses 
for us, believing that the true self was there 
and would emerge; who have pardoned our 
misdeeds and forgotten our meannesses. 

This is what I would believe of God — that 
He is not our censorious and severe critic, 
but our champion and lover, not loving us in 
spite of what we are, but because of what we 
are; who in the days of our strength rejoices 
in our joy, and does not Wish to overshadow 
it, like the conscientious human mentor, with 
considerations that we must yet be withered 
like grass; and who, when the youthful ebul- 
lience dies away, and the spring grows weak, 
and we wonder why the zest has died out of 
simple pleasures, out of agreeable noise and 
stir, is still with us, reminding us that ( the 
wisdom we are painfully and surely gaining 



The Love of God 403 

is a deeper and more lasting quality than even 
the hot impulses of youth. 

Once in my life have I conceived what might 
have been, if I had had the skill to paint it, 
an immortal picture. It was thus: I was 
attending a Christmas morning service in a 
big parish church. I was in a pew facing east ; 
close to me, in a transept, in a pew facing 
sideways, there sat a little old woman, who 
had hurried in just before the service began. 
She was a widow, living, I afterwards learned, 
in an almshouse hard by. She was old and 
feeble, very poor, and her life had been a 
series of calamities, relieved upon a back- 
ground of the hardest and humblest drudgery. 
She had lost her husband years ago by a pain- 
ful and terrible illness. She had lost her 
children one by one; she was alone in the 
world, save for a few distant and indifferent 
relatives. To get into the almshouse had been 
for her a stroke of incredible and inconceiv- 
able good fortune. She had a single room, 
with a tiny kitchen off it. She had very little 
to say for herself; she could hardly read. No 
one took any particular interest in her; but 
she was a kindly, gallant, unselfish old soul, 



404 At Large 

always ready to bear a hand, full of gratitude 
for the kindnesses she had received — and God 
alone knows how few they had been. 

She had a small, ugly, homely face, with- 
ered and gnarled hands; and she was dressed 
that day in a little old bonnet of unheard-of 
age, and in dingy, frowsy black clothes, shiny 
and creased, that came out of their box per- 
haps half-a-dozen times a year. 

But this morning she was in a festal mood. 
She had tidied up her little room; she was go- 
ing to have a bit of meat for dinner, given 
her by a neighbour. She had been sent a 
Christmas card that morning, and had pored 
over it with delight. She liked the stir and 
company of the church, and the cheerful air 
of the holly-berries. She held her book up 
before her, though I do not suppose she was 
even at the right page. She kept up a little 
faint cracked singing in her thin old voice ; but 
when they came to the hymn " Hark, the her- 
ald angels sing," which she had always known 
from childhood, she lifted up her head and 
sang more courageously: 

"Join the triumph of the skies! 
With the angelic host proclaim, 
Christ is born in Bethlehem! " 



The Love of God 405 

It was then that I had my vision. I do not 
know why, but at the sight of the wrinkled 
face and the sound of the plaintive uplifted 
voice, singing such words, a sudden mist of 
tears came over my eyes. Then I saw that 
close behind the old dame there stood a very 
young and beautiful man. I could see the 
fresh curling hair thrown back from the clear 
brow. He was clothed in a dim robe, of an 
opalescent hue and misty texture, and his 
hands were clasped together. It seemed that 
he sang too; but his eyes were bent upon the 
old woman with a look, half of tender amuse- 
ment, and half of unutterable lovingness. 
The angelic host ! This was one of that bright 
company indeed, going about the Father's 
business, bringing a joyful peace into the 
hearts of those among whom he moved. And 
of all the worshippers in that crowded church 
he had singled out the humblest and simplest 
for his friend and sister. I saw no more that 
day, for the lines of that presence faded out 
upon the air in the gleams of the frosty sun- 
shine that came and went among the pillars. 
But if I could have painted the scene, the 
pure, untroubled face so close to the old, 



4o6 At Large 

worn features, the robes of light side by side 
with the dingj human vesture, it would be a 
picture that no living eye that had rested 
on it should forget. 

Alas, that one cannot live in moments of 
inspiration like these! As life goes on, and 
as we begin perhaps to grow a little nearer 
to God by faith, we are confronted in our own 
lives, or in the life of one very near us, by 
some intolerable and shameful catastrophe. 
A careless sin makes havoc of a life, and shad- 
ows a home with shame; or some generous 
or unselfish nature, useful, beneficent, urgently 
needed, is struck down with a painful 
and hopeless malady. This, too, we say to 
ourselves, must come from God; He might 
have prevented it if He had so willed. What 
are we to make of it? How are we to trans- 
late into terms of love what seems like an act 
of tyrannous indifference, or deliberate cruelty? 
Then, I think, it is well to remind ourselves 
that we can never know exactly the conditions 
of any other human soul. How little we know 
of our own! How little we could explain our 
case to another, even if we were utterly sin- 
cere! The weaknesses of our nature are 



The Love of God 407 

often, very tenderly I would believe, hidden 
from us; we think ourselves sensitive and 
weak, when in reality we are armed with 
a stubborn breastplate of complacency and 
pride; or we think ourselves strong, only be- 
cause the blows of circumstance have been 
spared us. The more one knows of the most 
afflicted lives, the more often the conviction 
flashes across us that the affliction is not a 
wanton outrage, but a delicately adjusted 
treatment. I remember once that a friend of 
mine had sent him a rare plant, which was set 
in a big flower-pot, close to a fountain-basin. 
It never throve; it lived indeed, putting out 
in the spring a delicate stunted foliage, though 
my friend, who was a careful gardener, could 
never divine what ailed it. He was away for 
a few weeks, and the day after he was gone, 
the flower-pot was broken by a careless garden- 
boy, who wheeled a barrow roughly past it; 
the plant, earth and all, fell into the water; 
the boy removed the broken pieces of the 
pot, and seeing that the plant had sunk to 
the bottom of the little pool, never troubled 
his head to fish it out. When my friend re- 
turned, he noticed one day in the fountain a 



4o8 At Large 

new and luxuriant growth of some unknown 
plant. He made careful inquiries and found 
out what had happened. It then came out 
that the plant was in reality a water-plant, 
and that it had pined away in the stifling air 
for want of nourishment, perhaps dimly long- 
ing for the fresh bed of the pool. 

Even so has it been, times without number, 
with some starving and thirsty soul, that has 
gone on feebly trying to live a maimed life, 
shut up in itself, ailing, feeble. There has 
descended upon it what looks at first sight like 
a calamity, some affliction unaccountable and 
irreparable; and then it proves that this was 
the one thing needed ; that sorrow has brought 
out some latent unselfishness, or suffering 
energised some unused faculty of strength and 
patience. 

But even if it is not so, if we cannot trace 
in our own lives or the lives of others the bene- 
ficent influence of suffering, we can always 
take refuge in one thought. We can see that 
the one mighty and transforming power on 
earth is the power of love; we see people make 
sacrifices, not momentary sacrifices, but life- 
long patient renunciations, for the sake of 



The Love of God 409 

one whom they love; we see a great and pas- 
sionate affection touch into being a whole 
range of unsuspected powers; we see men and 
women utterly unconscious of pain and weari- 
ness, utterly unaware that they are acting 
without a thought of self, if they can but 
soothe the pain of one dear to them, or win a 
smile from beloved lips; it is not that the self- 
ishness, the indolence, is not there, but it is 
all borne away upon a mighty stream, as the 
river-wrack spins upon the rising flood. 

If then this marvellous, this amazing power 
of love can cause men to make, with joy and 
gladness, sacrifices of which in their loveless 
days they w^ould have deemed themselves and 
confessed themselves wholly incapable, can 
we not feel with confidence that the power, 
which lies thus deepest in the heart of the 
world, lies also deepest in the heart of God, of 
whom the world is but a faint reflection? It 
cannot be otherwise. We may sadly ponder, 
indeed, why the love that has been, or that 
might have been, the strength of weary lives 
should be withdrawn or sternly withheld, but 
we need not be afraid, if we have one gener- 
ous impulse for another, if we ever put aside 



41 o At Large 

a delight that may please or attract us, for 
the sake of one who expects or would value 
any smallest service — and there are few who 
cannot feel this, — we need not then, I say, 
doubt that the love which we desire, and 
which we have somehow missed or lost, is 
there waiting for us, ours all the time, if we 
but knew it. 

And even if we miss the sweet influence of 
love in our lives, is there anyone who has not, 
in solitude and dreariness, looked back upon 
the time when he was surrounded by love and 
opportunities of love, in childhood or in youth, 
with 'a bitter regret that he did not make more 
of it when it was so near to him, that he was 
so blind and selfish, that he was not a little 
more tender, a little more kind? I will speak 
frankly for myself and say that the memories 
which hurt me most, when I stumble upon them, 
are those of the small occasions when I showed 
myself perverse and hard; when eyes, long 
since closed, looked at me with a pathetic 
expectancy; when I warded off the loving im- 
pulse by some jealous sense of my own rights, 
some peevish anger at a fancied injustice; 
when I stifled the smile, and withheld the 



The Love of God 411 

hand, and turned away in silence, glad, in 
that poisonous moment, to feel that I could 
at all events inflict that pain in base requital. 
One may know that it is all forgiven, one may 
be sure that the misunderstanding has faded 
in the light of the other dawn, but still the 
cold base shadow, the thought of one's per- 
verse cruelty, strikes a gloom upon the mind. 

But with God, when one once begins to draw 
near to Him, one need have no such poignant 
regrets or overshadowing memories; one may 
say to Him in one's heart, as simply as a 
child, that He knows what one has been and 
is, what one might have been and what one 
desires to be; and one may cast oneself at 
His feet in the overwhelming hope that He 
will make of oneself what He would have one 
to be. 

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, it is not 
the poor wretch himself, whose miserable 
motive for returning is plainly indicated — 
that instead of pining in cold and hunger he 
may be warmed and clothed, — who is the hero 
of the story ; still less is it the hard and virtu- 
ous elder son. The hero of the tale is the pa- 
tient, tolerant, loving father, who had acted, as 



412 At Large 

a censorious critic might say, foolishly and 
culpably, in supplying the dissolute boy with 
resources, and taking him back without a word 
of just reproach. A sad lack of moral disci- 
pline, no doubt! If he had kept the boy in 
fear and godliness, if he had tied him down 
to honest work, the disaster need never have 
happened. Yet the old man, who went so 
often at sundown, we may think, to the crest 
of the hill, from which he could see the long 
road winding over the plain to the far-off city, 
the road by which he had seen his son depart, 
light-heartedly and full of fierce joyful im- 
pulses, and along which he was to see the de- 
jected figure, so familiar, so sadly marred, 
stumbling home — he is the master-spirit of the 
sweet and comforting scene. His heart is full 
of utter gladness, for the lost is found. He 
smiles upon the servants; he bids the house- 
hold rejoice; he can hardly, in his simple joy 
of heart, believe that the froward elder brother 
is vexed and displeased; and his words of en- 
treaty that the brother, too, will enter into the 
spirit of the hour, are some of the most pa- 
thetic and beautiful ever framed in human 
speech: ^^ Son, thou art ever with me, and all 



The Love of God 413 

that I have is thine; it was meet that we 
should make merry, and be glad: for this thy 
brother was dead, and is alive again, and was 
lost, and is found." 

And this is, after all, the way in which God 
deals with us. He gives us our portion to 
spend as we choose; He holds nothing back; 
and when we have wasted it and brought mis- 
ery upon ourselves, and return to Him, even 
for the worst of reasons. He has not a word 
of rebuke or caution ; He is simply and utterly 
filled with joy and love. There are a thousand 
texts that would discourage us, would bid us 
believe that God deals hardly with us, but 
it is men that deal hardly with us, it is we 
that deal hardly with ourselves. This story, 
which is surely the most beautiful story in the 
world, gives us the deliberate thought of the 
Saviour, the essence of His teaching; and we 
may fling aside the bitter warnings of jealous 
minds, and cast ourselves upon the supreme 
hope that, if only we will return, we are dealt 
with even more joyfully than if we had never 
wandered at all. 

And then perhaps at last, when we have 
peeped again and again, through loss and suf- 



414 At Large 

fering, at the dark background of life; when 
we have seen the dreariest corner of the 
lonely road, where the path grows steep and 
miry, and the light is veiled by scudding cloud 
and dripping rain, there begins to dawn upon 
us the sense of a beautiful and holy patience, 
the thought that these grey ashes of life, in 
which the glowing cinders sink, which once 
were bright with leaping flame, are not the 
end — that the flame and glow are there, al- 
though momently dispersed. They have done 
their work; one is warmed and enlivened; one 
can sit still, feeding one's fancy on the laps- 
ing embers, just as one saw pictures in the fire 
as an eager child long ago. That high-hearted 
excitement and that curiosity have faded. 
Life is very different from what we expected, 
more wholesome, more marvellous, more brief, 
more inconclusive; but there is an intenser, 
if quieter and more patient, curiosity to wait 
and see what God is doing for us; and the 
orange-stain and green glow of the sunset, 
though colder and less jocund, is yet a far 
more mysterious, tender, and beautiful thing 
than the steady glow of the noonday sun, 
when the shining flies darted hither and 



The Love of God 415 

thither, and the roses sent out their rich fra- 
grance. There is fragrance still, the fragrance 
X)f the evening flowers, where the western win- 
dows look across the misty fields, to the 
thickening shadows of the tall trees. But 
there is something that speaks in the gather- 
ing gloom, in the darkening sky with its flush 
of crimson fire, that did not speak in the sun- 
warmed garden and the dancing leaves; and 
what speaks is the mysterious love of God, a 
thing sweeter and more remote than the urgent 
bliss of the fiery noon, full of delicate mys- 
teries and appealing echoes. We have learned 
that the darkness is no darkness with Him; 
and the soul which beat her wings so passion- 
ately in the brighter light of the hot morn- 
ing, now at last begins to dream of whither 
she is bound, and the dear shade where she 
will fold her weary wing. 

How often has the soul in her dreariness 
cried out, ^' One effort more ! " But that is 
done with forever. She is patient now; she 
believes at last; she labours no longer at the 
oar, but she is borne upon the moving tide; 
she is on her way to the deep Heart of God. 



Epilogue 



I HAVE wandered far enough in my thought, 
it would seem, from the lonely grange in 
its wide pastures, and the calm expanse of 
fen ; and I should wish once more to bring my 
reader back home with me to the sheltered 
garden, and the orchard knee-deep in grass, 
and the embowering elms; for there is one 
word more to be said, and that may be best 
said at home; though our experience is not 
limited by time or place. It was on the lonely 
ridge, strewn with boulders and swept by 
night-winds, when the darkness closed in 
drearily about him, that Jacob, a homeless 
exile, in the hour of his utmost desolation, saw 
the ladder whose golden head was set at the 
very foot of God, thronged with bright mes- 
sengers of strength and hope. And again it 
was in the familiar homestead, with every 
corner rich in gentle memories, that the spirit 
of terror turned the bitter stream of anguish, 
416 



Epilogue 417 

as from the vent of some thunderous cloud, 
upon the sad head of Job. We may turn a 
corner in life, and be confronted perhaps with 
an uncertain shape of grief and despair, whom 
we would fain banish from our shuddering 
sight, perhaps with some solemn form of 
heavenly radiance, whom we may feel reluc- 
tant in our unworthiness to entertain. But in 
either case, such times as those, when we 
wrestle all night with the angel, not knowing 
if he wishes us well or ill, ignorant of his 
name and his mien alike, are better than hours 
spent in indolent contentment, in the realisa- 
tion of our placid and petty designs. For, 
after all, it is the quality rather than the 
quantity of our experience that matters; it is 
easy enough to recognise that, when we are 
working light-heartedly and eagerly at some 
brave design, and seeing the seed we plant 
springing up all about us in fertile rows in the 
garden of God. But what of those days when 
our lot seems only to endure, when we can 
neither scheme nor execute, when the old volu- 
bility and vitality desert us, and our one care 
is just to make our dreary presence as little 
of a burden and a shadow as possible to those 



41 8 At Large 

whom we love? We must then remind our- 
selves, not once or twice, that nothing can 
separate us from the Father of all, even though 
our own wilfulness and perversity may have 
drawn about us a cloud of sorrow. We are 
perhaps most in God^s mind when we seem 
most withdrawn from Him. He is nearer us 
when we seek for Him and cannot find Him, 
than when we forget Him in laughter and 
self-pleasing. And we must remember too 
that it is neither faithful nor fruitful to abide 
wilfully in sadness, to clasp our cares close, 
to luxuriate in them. There is a beautiful 
story of Mrs. Charles Kingsley, who long sur- 
vived her husband. Never perhaps had two 
souls been united by so close a bond of chiv- 
alry and devotion. " Whenever I find myself 
thinking too much about Charles,'^ she said 
in the days of her grief, " I find and read the 
most sensational novel I can. People may 
think it heartless, but hearts were given us to 
love with, not to break." And we must deal 
with our sorrows as we deal with any other 
gift of God, courageously and temperately, not 
faint-heartedly or wilfully; not otherwise can 
they be blest to us. We must not pettishly 



Epilogue 419 

reject consolation and distraction. Pain is a 
great angel, but we must wrestle with him, 
until he bless us! and the blessings he can 
bring us are first a wholesome shame at our 
old selfish ingratitude in the untroubled days, 
when we took care and pleasure greedily; and 
next, if we meet him faithfully, he can make 
our heart go out to all our brothers and sis- 
ters who suffer in this brief and troubled life 
of ours. For we are here to learn something, 
if we can but spell it out; and thus it is mor- 
bid to indulge regrets and remorse too much 
over our failures and mistakes; for it is 
through them that we learn. We must be as 
brave as we can, and dare to grudge no pang 
that brings us nearer to the reality of things. 
Reality! that is the secret; for we who live 
in dreams, who pursue beauty, who are 
haunted as by a passion for that sweet quality 
that thrills alike in the wayside flower and the 
orange pomp of the setting sun, that throbs 
in written word and uttered melody, that calls 
to us suddenly and secretly in the glance of 
an eye and the gesture of a hand, — we, I say, 
who discern these gracious motions, tend to 
live in them too luxuriously, to idealise life, to 



42 o At Large 

make out of our daily pilgrimage, our goings 
and comings, a golden untroubled picture; it 
need not be a false or a base effort to escape 
from what is sordid or distasteful; but for 
all that we run a sore risk in yielding too 
placidly to our visions; and, as with the Lady 
of Shalott, it may be well for us if our woven 
>veb be rent aside, and our magic mirror 
broken; nay, even if death comes to us at the 
close of the mournful song. Thus then we 
draw near and look reluctant and dismayed 
into the bare truth of things. We see, it 
may be, our poor pretences tossed aside, and 
the embroidered robe in which we have striven 
to drape our leanness torn from us; but we 
must gaze as steadily as we can, and pray that 
the vision be not withdrawn till it has wrought 
its perfect work within us; and then, with 
energies renewed, we may set out again on 
pilgrimage, happy in this, that we no longer 
mistake the arbour of refreshment for the goal 
of our journey, or the quiet house of welcome, 
tliat receives us in the hour of weariness, for 
the heavenly city, with all its bright mansions 
and radiant palaces. 

It is experience that matters, as I have said ; 



Epilogue 421 

not what we do, but how we do it. The ma- 
terial things that we collect about us in our 
passage through life, that we cling to so pa- 
thetically, and into which something of our 
very selves seems to pass, these things are 
little else than snares and hindrances to our 
progress- — like the clay that sticks to the feet 
of the traveller, like the burden of useless 
things that he carries painfully with him, 
things which he cannot bring himself to throw 
away because they might possibly turn out to 
be useful, and which meanwhile clank and 
clatter fruitlessly about the laden beast, and 
weigh him down. What we have rather to do 
is to disengage ourselves from these things: 
from the money which we do not need, but 
which may help us some day; from the luxu- 
ries we do not enjoy; from the furniture we 
trail about with us from home to home. All 
those things get a hold of us and tie us to 
earth, even when the associations with them 
are dear and tender enough. The mistake we 
make is not in loving them — they are or can 
be signs to us of the love and care of God — but 
we must refrain from loving the possession of 
them. 



42 2 At Large 

Take for instance one of the least mundane 
of things, the knowledge we painfully acquire, 
and the possession of which breeds in us such 
lively satisfaction. If it is our duty to ac- 
quire knowledge and to impart it, we must 
acquire it ; but it is the faithfulness with which 
we toil, not the accumulations we gain, that 
is blessed to us — " knowledge comes but wis- 
dom lingers," says the poet — and it is the 
heavenly wisdom of which we ought to be in 
search; for what remains to us of our equip- 
mentj when we part from the world and mi- 
grate elsewhere, is not the actual stuff that 
we have collected, whether it be knowledge or 
money, but the patience, the diligence, the 
care which we have exercised in gaining these 
things, the character, as affected by the work 
we have done; but our mistake is to feel that 
we are idle and futile, unless we have tangible 
results to show; when perhaps the hours in 
which we sat idle, out of misery or mere feeble- 
ness, are the most fruitful hours of all for the 
growth of the soul. 

The great savant dies. What is lost? Not 
a single fact or a single truth, but only his 
apprehension, his collection of certain truths; 



Epilogue 423 

not a single law of nature perishes or is altered 
thereby. We measure worth by prominence 
and fame; but the destiny of the simplest and 
vilest of the human race is as august, as 
momentous as the destiny of the mightiest 
king or conqueror; it is not our admiration 
of each other that weighs with God, but our 
nearness to, our dependence on Him. Yet, 
even so, we must not deceive ourselves in the 
matter. We must be sure that it is the peace 
of God that we indeed desire, and not merely 
a refined kind of leisure; that we are in search 
of simplicity, and not merely afraid of work. 
We must not glorify a mild spectatorial pleas- 
ure by the name of philosophy, or excuse our 
indolence under the name of contemplation. 
We must abstain deliberately, not tamely hang 
back; we must desire the Kingdom of Heaven 
for itself, and not for the sake of the things 
that are added if we seek it. If the Scribes 
and Pharisees have their reward for ambition 
and self-seeking, the craven soul has its re- 
ward too, and that reward is a sick emptiness 
of spirit. And then if we have erred thus, 
if we have striven to pretend to ourselves that 
we were careless of the prize, when in reality 



424 At Large 

we only feared the battle, what can we do? 
How can we repair our mistake? There is but 
one way; we can own the pitiful fault, and 
not attempt to glorify it; we can face the 
experience, take our petty and shameful wages 
and cast ourselves afresh, in our humiliation 
and weakness, upon God, rejoicing that we 
can at least feel the shame, and enduring the 
chastisement with patient hopefulness; for 
that very suffering is a sign that God has not 
left us to ourselves, but is giving us perforce 
the purification which we could not take to 
ourselves. 

And even thus, life is not all an agony, a 
battle, an endurance; there are sweet hours of 
refreshment and tranquillity between the twi- 
light and the dawn ; hours when we can rest a 
little in the shadow, and see the brimming 
stream of life flowing quietly but surely to its 
appointed end. I watched to-day an old shep- 
herd, on a wide field, moving his wattled 
hurdles, one by one, in the slow, golden after- 
noon ; and a whole burden of anxious thoughts 
fell off me for a while, leaving me full of a 
quiet hope for an end which was not yet, but 
that certainly awaited me ; of a day when I too 



Epilogue 425 

might perhaps move as unreflectingly, as 
calmly, iu harmony with the everlasting Will, 
as the old man moved about his familiar task. 
Why that harmony should be so blurred and 
broken, why we should leave undone the things 
that we desire to do, and do the things that we 
do not desire, that is still a deep and sad mys- 
tery; yet even in the hour of our utmost wil- 
fulness, we can never wander beyond the range 
of the Will that has made us, and bidden us 
to be what we are. And thus as I sit in this 
low-lit hour, there steals upon the heart the 
message of hope and healing; the scent of the 
great syringa bush leaning out into the twi- 
light, the sound of the fitful breeze laying 
here and there a caressing hand upon the 
leaves, the soft radiance of the evening star 
hung in the green spaces of the western sky, 
each and all blending into incommunicable 
dreams. 

THE END 



5lj.77"l 



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